Here's a story that nicely encapsulates these interesting economic times, from the front page of Wednesday's San Francisco Examiner: 'Agassi suffers a loss ' in sale of Tiburon home.' Who could have predicted, just a few short years ago, that someone selling a home for $20 million would have lost money? But Agassi most surely did, since the sale price is about $3 million less than he paid for his Bay Area dacha five years ago. The guy who scooped up this bargain, if a $20 million home can properly be called a bargain, was one Stuart Peterson, a Dotcom 2.0 zillionaire whose hedge fund had acquired a large stake in YouTube before Google bought the company last month for $1.65 billion. It's too early to speculate on who overpaid more, Peterson or Google. But suffice it to say, in these breathtakingly liquid times, the dollar amounts involved are probably just chump change to either buyer. But whereas Peterson can settle into his fabulous new digs and enjoy such creature comforts as no Roman emperor or pasha would have dreamed of, the big spenders at Google will be tasked with the problem of making a profit on their $1.65 billion investment. Google's Blunder At first glance that would seem to be a simple matter, since YouTube is currently the 800-pound gorilla of the Web, delivering one of the biggest captive audiences on earth. But delivering to whom is a question that the entrepreneurial turks at Google seem not to have considered, at least not in any depth. The simple answer is that YouTube users have been delivering the content to each other, notably without the help of advertisers and media placement companies trying to broker the middle. Will millions of cyberworld junkies continue to imbibe snippets from YouTube if every
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