Google buys YouTube for $1.65bn

Well blow me. Google has bought YouTube for $1.65bn.

Phewie.

That is the value of people's gathering places nowadays? Just compare that amount to how much it would cost to give every child in the globe a laptop. Or free wifi for all. Or even just a better national health service. Incredible and quite wrong when you think about it - no matter how much I enjoy YouTube and the creativity it spawns.

And note: it is the creativity it spawns that is one of its biggest pulls for me. That can mean anything from teenagers in the bedrooms to video editing students cum comic geniuses to home-living inventors to 78 year old gripers to funny women to depressed men to machinima makers to pranksters to remixers making Bush and Blair do odd things while making a serious point at the same time.

Oh and after your fill of that (which can take hours frankly) you can sit back and enjoy a short trailer of the new episode of South Park (in WoW). Or other *very short and streaming* "TV stuff" which acts as a preview of what will be on my screen in the corner of the room soon.