After a lot of rumors over the past few days, Google and YouTube made it official, as the online-video site has sold out for $1.65 billion in Google stock. The sale represents the successful execution of the Skype strategy of using the media to seed the idea that the company was worth so much. Seeing as Google spends so much already on its infrastructure and bandwidth, this should put to rest any discussion of how much it costs YouTube to host all those videos. The next worry, of course, is making nice with the content owners, something that the company been pursuing actively. Just today, the site signed deals with Universal, CBS, and Sony BMG. The challenge is not just to get the entertainment companies on board, but to do it in such a way that allows YouTube to remain cool; this was what Napster failed to do when it went legit. Obviously, $1.65 billion is a high price to pay for a young company with an uncertain outlook, but it's known that Google sees big things for online video, and so far hasn't had much success in the space. There's bound to be a lot of pundits giving their thumbs up or thumbs down to the deal. One of the most outspoken on YouTube is Mark Cuban, who of course has a lot of experience with billion-dollar buyouts of video companies. He said this weekend that this deal would be beyond moronic, and that Google can expect scads of lawsuits, not necessarily from big content companies, but from small copyright owners looking for somebody to sue. Now we get our chance to see if he's correct.
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