16. How did Google surprise the business world in 2006?
(A) By selling most of its shares on financial markets.
(B) By starting a website for people to share videos.
(C) By paying a high price for a very young company.
(D) By taking more than a billion dollars from YouTube

 One event that shook the business world in 2006 was the takeover by Internet superpower Google of an extremely popular video-sharing website called YouTube.
takeover: 1.收購 2.接管

One event that shook the business world in 2006 was the takeover by Internet superpower Google of an extremely popular video-sharing website called YouTube. The $1.65 billion purpose resulted in astonished reaction in the world’s financial markets. After all, it was a remarkable price to pay for a company that didn’t exist two years earlier. It all began in January 2005 at a dinner party in San Francisco. Three former employees of PayPal, a company that operates an online payment system, were chatting about the difficulty of sharing home videos with friends online. Videos were difficult to download, and they were often too big to be sent through e-mail. Working in a garage, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Taiwan-born Steve Chen developed a website through which short homemade videos would be easy to download and to watch online. They named it YouTube, which basically means “your television.” In other words, you can broadcast your own stuff. People began uploading interesting and funny videos to share with others, at no cost. Word about the fun new site began to spread. The site’s popularity took off like a rocket. In less than two years, more than 100 million videos were being viewed each day on YouTube. Clips ranged from music and comedy stunts to shameless self-promotional messages. Some, such as “Hong Kong Bus Uncle,” which features a loud argument filmed on a cell phone by a bus passenger, have achieved worldwide fame. As well as personal videos, many clips from movies, TV shows, and advertisements have found their way onto YouTube. Sneaker giant Nike, for example, has provided video clips to the site. Music recording companies such as Warner and EMI have also used the site to promote their music videos, and small companies that can’t afford to advertize on TV have also used YouTube for publicity. With so many users, YouTube’s advertising potential is obvious. If Google can figure out how to sell ads to even a fraction of the site’s huge number of visitors, it will have been a very good acquisition indeed.

2006年，震驚世界的一個事件是互聯網超級大咖Google收購了一個非常受歡迎的視頻共享網站YouTube。 16.5億美元在世界金融市場引起了驚人的反響。畢竟，這是為兩年前不存在的公司付出高昂的價格。這一切都始於2005年1月在舊金山舉行的晚宴上。 PayPal是一家經營在線支付系統的公司，其三名前員工正在談論與在線朋友共享家庭視頻的困難。視頻很難下載，而且通常太大而無法通過電子郵件發送。乍得·赫利（Chad Hurley），賈沃德·卡里姆（Jawed Karim）和出生在台灣的史蒂夫·陳（Steve Chen）在車庫工作，開發了一個網站，通過該網站可以輕鬆下載和觀看在線短片。他們將其命名為YouTube，這基本上意味著“您的電視”。換句話說，您可以廣播自己的東西。人們開始免費上傳有趣和有趣的視頻以與他人共享。關於這個有趣的新網站的消息開始傳播。該網站的受歡迎程度如火箭般迅速上升。在不到兩年的時間裡，每天YouTube上觀看的視頻超過1億個。剪輯從音樂和喜劇特技到自我宣傳等等。諸如“香港巴士叔叔”之類的電影因巴士乘客在手機上拍攝的激烈爭論而聲名遠揚，在世界範圍內享有盛譽。除個人視頻外，電影，電視節目和廣告中的許多剪輯都已進入YouTube。例如，運動鞋巨頭耐克（Nike）已向該網站提供了視頻剪輯。華納（Warner）和百代（EMI）等唱片公司也使用該網站來宣傳他們的音樂視頻，而沒錢在電視上做廣告的小型公司也利用YouTube進行了宣傳。在如此眾多的用戶中，YouTube的廣告潛力顯而易見。如果Google能夠弄清楚如何向該網站龐大流量中的一小部分出售廣告，那將是一次非常不錯的收購。