You make an interesting point, it seems like everything that Google does is magic according to the media (even if it is not). A friend pointed me to YouTube for a recent SouthPark episode (World of Warcraft). It was on the site 6 or 7 times, available to anyone who wanted to download it. Which brings us to the biggest challenge that Google, Microsoft or other large corporation was facing with YouTube: rights. Putting Southpark up there is a clear infringement of copyright laws (It is not different than hawking copied DVDs on the corner) ... so the quesiton becomes, when does the 'napster like' hammer come down on YouTube? And then it is all over. As soon as they need to start controlling the content, then people flee (As Napster saw). Google, a legitimate entity, bought an entity that is skirting the law. As the company that bought Napster found out, in the end that probably won't translate into value (other than keeping the asset away from the hands of competitors, which is an expensive defense strategy). The other interesting thing is the power of the internet. What Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have seen is that it not about having an asset, it is about what the consumer decides on as the asset of choice. For example, Google owns search, Yahoo is the highest use portal, Microsoft owns IM and mail. But, if you look at video, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft had assets to do that before YouTube, but YouTube beat them all. Another example is Craigslist for online classifieds, everyone has that asset but the market chooses Craigslist. It will be interesting to see how Google will expand past their core competency. It is not as easy as it sounds and takes many years to make profitable. PS: For disclosure purposes, I work for MS.