Just think about that amount for a while. OK, it's in shares and not cold, hard cash, but... it's a good chunk of change.

I'm talking about the Google-YouTube deal of course. When the rumour first surfaced and the US$1.65 billion figure was mentioned, I thought "no way".

YouTube's been going since February 2005 only, and while it has heaps of users, it also has big bandwidth bills. The estimated amount of daily data churned out by YouTube is 200 terabytes, and that costs a lot even in the US. (As a sidenote, I can't imagine there ever being a YouTube in NZ with our expensive bandwidth charges.)

There's some AdSense ads on YouTube now, but where's all the money going go come from? Some people reckon it'll be TV producers hopping aboard the YouTube train, but I'm not so sure. YouTube is only suited for short clips in low resolution at the moment. Anything more ambitious requires even more bandwidth, which neither YouTube nor its users yet have.

Either way though, congrats to Steve, Chad and Jawed. That's some record there, guys.