YouTube vs. Boob Tube

Google – as you may have read in every publication, online and off, in the entire freaking world – just paid $1.65 billion in stock to be the cute little kitty-cat's home.

The price tag for YouTube, just to put the investment in perspective, is what Target paid for 257 Mervyns department stores and four distribution centers in 13 states, and just a bit more than WPP Group paid for the Grey Global Group advertising network with 10,500 employees in 83 countries generating $1.3 billion in revenue. Those, of course, are both profitable enterprises with vast fixed assets. YouTube's fixed assets pretty much consist of a video interface and a cool retro logo. So why is it worth nearly six times the gross domestic product of Micronesia?

This story will definitively answer that question.