10 October - The online land grab of popular sites featuring user-generated content took a big leap this week when Google announced it is to acquire the video site YouTube.com for $1.65bn.
Launched last year, YouTube took on the mantle of the Net's fastest growing fad as traffic soared to more than 100 million videos served per day. It is estimated to hold 46% of the online video-sharing market compared with GoogleVideo's 11%. YouTube's chief executive Chad Hurley had repeated claimed YouTube was not for sale, but agreed to sell out to Google because it promised to let YouTube continue to operate as an independent site.
It's beginning to look like dotcom days are here again, as the YouTube deal dwarfs the $580 million Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid last year for the teenage/music networking site MySpace.com.