tnl.net— Trying to put the recent Google/ YouTube deal in perspective, Tristan Louis put together a great overview on tech acquistions of the last few years.
Oct 10, 2006View in Crawl 4
Some deals seem to be less fair than the other ones but, hey, we're living in a world where popularity is sometimes more important than the actual value.
The price paid for youtube has no connection to reality- the reason Google massively overpaid for it was that Sequoia (the single largest shareholder of youtube) was also the VC behind Google (and also the largest shareholder of google until last year)Sequoia used its influence to get Google to overpay ON PURPOSE for youtube. Sequoia invested 11 million dollars in youtube 6 months ago.Today that investment is "worth" 500 million dollars.It's the same as if Bill Gates bought a 50% ownership stake in the corner grocery store for 50,000 dollars, then had microsoft buy out that grocery store a week for 50 million dollars because MSFT just "decided" they had to build a new office tower on the grocery store's property.Dumb people might ask "Isn't microsoft wildly overpaying for that grocery store?" when the smart people would ask "Didn't Bill Gates just put 25 million dollars in his own pocket?"This happened every other week at the height of the dot.com boom. Large public companies would buy small 4 person private companies that had no product or revenue. Inevitably, you'd read in SEC filings later that board members or execs or VCs at the public company had made equity investments in the small company only weeks earlier. They then used their influence and power to BUY THAT SMALL COMPANY FOR INSANE AMOUNTS OF CASH, THUS POCKETING INSANE PROFITS.And hey- it's totally legal. Just like backdating stock options was totally legal until last year- now half of silicon valley is under investigation by the feds for accounting fraud.Life is short. Fraud is easy. Your chances of getting caught are low. Your rewards if you get away with it are mind-boggling. Why not try?
mrsolutionsOct 10, 2006
Interesting stuff...Looks like Its the biggest acquisition this year. Bigger than the Myspace one. But still smaller than last years Skype-Ebay deal.To read my thoughts on the takeover check out:<a class="user" href="http://digg.com/business_finance/Analysis_of_the_YouTube_Acquisition_by_Google/who">http://digg.com/business_finance/Analysis_of_the_YouTube_Acquisition_by_Google/who</a>
xtr3mOct 11, 2006
Some deals seem to be less fair than the other ones but, hey, we're living in a world where popularity is sometimes more important than the actual value.
Closed AccountOct 11, 2006
The price paid for youtube has no connection to reality- the reason Google massively overpaid for it was that Sequoia (the single largest shareholder of youtube) was also the VC behind Google (and also the largest shareholder of google until last year)Sequoia used its influence to get Google to overpay ON PURPOSE for youtube. Sequoia invested 11 million dollars in youtube 6 months ago.Today that investment is "worth" 500 million dollars.It's the same as if Bill Gates bought a 50% ownership stake in the corner grocery store for 50,000 dollars, then had microsoft buy out that grocery store a week for 50 million dollars because MSFT just "decided" they had to build a new office tower on the grocery store's property.Dumb people might ask "Isn't microsoft wildly overpaying for that grocery store?" when the smart people would ask "Didn't Bill Gates just put 25 million dollars in his own pocket?"This happened every other week at the height of the dot.com boom. Large public companies would buy small 4 person private companies that had no product or revenue. Inevitably, you'd read in SEC filings later that board members or execs or VCs at the public company had made equity investments in the small company only weeks earlier. They then used their influence and power to BUY THAT SMALL COMPANY FOR INSANE AMOUNTS OF CASH, THUS POCKETING INSANE PROFITS.And hey- it's totally legal. Just like backdating stock options was totally legal until last year- now half of silicon valley is under investigation by the feds for accounting fraud.Life is short. Fraud is easy. Your chances of getting caught are low. Your rewards if you get away with it are mind-boggling. Why not try?
driya2000Oct 11, 2006
The NYT article linked in the blog is much more informative than the blog itself. The blog is nothing more than a list of deals and prices:<a class="user" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/technology/10deal.html?ei=5090&en=d8a82aacfcbbe1ee&ex=1318132800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/technology/10deal.html?ei=5090&en=d8a82aacfcbbe1ee&ex=1318132800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print</a>
whitey04Oct 11, 2006
Thank god for this article.I was starting to worry we wouldn't have any more google youtube analysis on the Digg front page. Whew.