Google surprises all with its purchase of YouTube

YouTube provides online video quickly when you want it and those related video links are just addictive. My favourites are World of Warcraft clips and comedian videos like Bill Hicks. If you have not had your head stuck in the sand over the last few days you would have heard Google has purchased YouTube, or more precisely they have given the owners a tonne of Google stock ($1.65 billion worth) and not a single real dollar changed hands. Hopefully this purchase by Google provides a search speed increase, at the moment searching for videos is often very slow when compared to just browsing which is always very snappy.

Probably the most interesting reaction to this came from Jason Calacanis who was all for the deal which is quite unlike his tone on the Gillmor Gang of late. The most unsurprising reaction was from Mark Cuban who stuck to his guns by saying YouTube is a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen and bad news for any future owner.