Who knows if it will be Google Tube or not…If it is, it’s a plus with teens since Google reigns supreme with this demo — even in email, which teens are barely using. According to this item about a youth…

Seems to me the Web 1.0 guys just can’t “get it” structurally. Yahoo Groups also had loads of picture, but they still had to buy Flickr. Mind you, they boought it far earlier for far, far less.

If you can’t beat ‘em and have to buy ‘em, at least do it early enough!

The only logical approach if Google, or anyone else, feels they’ve just got to have it for themselves is to have their legal team form a stand-alone legal entity and have it buy YouTube; then put together any “symbiotic” relationships between the two as two companies operating at arms-length distance from each other…to protect their existing business/es from judgements.

…and yes, YouTube’s owners and investors would be just plain nuts to turn down anything they can get over a billions dollars…before the movie companies (also justifiably so) bury them in Internet grave yard.

Best sentence I read today: Mark Cuban knows a few things first hand – how to snooker a big company into buying something for billions and then walk into the sunset. Perhaps that is why I take his argument that…

At the end of the day, anyone can say whatever they feel about youtube, yahoo, goog, etc but if Chad and Steve don’t sell for the 1.6B they are the crazy ones.

Bottom line is that one way or another youtube is making moves to pay the copyright holders. They want to start monetizing their huge audience and it is evident by the strategic alliances they are making with Warner etc.

The easiest way to do this is to find a suitor with deeper pockets than they currently have that can handle their overhead as well as grow the core business.

Google does seem like a good fit. Think of the entire inventory they can place adword style ads as well as video pre and post roll ads.

1) YouTube is the fastest growing site in the entire history of the web. Zero to top 10 in 12 months.

2) Sequoia is fairly methodical and often highly successful.

Factor the lawsuit risk into the acquisition price? Copyright infringement settlements could cost billions…far more than the purchase price.

Most technology people don’t know much about copyright law…and the penalties. I didn’t either until I was VP of Napster and we were sued by the RIAA. The penalties for violating the copyright of a $.99 download is hundreds of thousands of dollars per instance. The penalties are totally out of proportion to the damages. Copyright laws are outrageously tough.

I wrote a blog on coyright law and the web a while ago. Worth reading again. http://dondodge.typepad.com/thenextbigthing/2006/05/copyrightlaw_o.html