Reading about the Google - YouTube deal today made me reflect yet again on the 1999-2000 Internet period.

This latest deal very much reminds me of Yahoo buying Broadcast.com back then. This was the beginning of Yahoo attempting to be more of a media company than an Internet search company.

Therefore one can see Google repeating a bit of what Yahoo did by buying a property that makes them somewhat of a media company for the first time in their brief history. A big difference, of course, is that when Yahoo bought Broadcast.com keyword ads were yet to be born. And now Google can presumably monetize YouTube with keyword buys alone (although I would presume that the combined Google-YouTube braintrust has greater ambitions than just selling keywords).

Broadcast.com ended up being basically worthless to Yahoo. Mark Cuban sold just at the correct time and cashed in his stock to become a billionaire. It will be interesting to see what happens to YouTube as part of Google - will YouTube be a cornerstone to the growth of Google or will it be another Broadcast.com? One thing for sure, the YouTube founders will certainly be very wealthy. I wonder if they will buy a pro basketball team?