Another day, more rumours ("totally unsubstantiated", mind you) that YouTube is going to be purchase for a kazillion dollars. Let's just auction the damn thing on eBay and auction it off so we can finally kill this weird YouTube obsession. There, I feel much better now. Update: Om Malik said dismissed the prospects of a YouTube-Google deal, suggesting "it has as much chance of happening as me dropping 40 pounds". In his typical pragmatic approach to rumours and speculation, Paul Kedrosky opines that "the blogosphere has predicted nine of the last three Google acquisitions, so skepticism is highly warranted".

Update: ComScore has some food for thought about the Google-YouTube speculation. For example, the number of unique U.S. visitors in August:

Yahoo! Video		21,141   
MySpace Videos		19,406   
YouTube			19,089   
MSN Video		15,414      
Google Video Search	11,891 
And % of U.S. video streams in August:
Yahoo! Sites	   	11.3%   
MySpace		   	20.3%   
YouTube		   	9.0%   
Microsoft Sites	   	2.2%   
Google Sites	   	0.8%