from YouTube.com
YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen delivered the news of their purchase by Google to the YouTube community as did LonelyGirl15, Justin the "Evolution of Dance" guy and scores of lip-synching teens before them: By posting a video to YouTube. No bells and whistles for these folks, the clip is pretty bare-bones, complete with on-screen crack-up, right about where Hurley says "This is great - two kings have gotten togehter and we're goig to be able to provide you an even better service and build even more innovative features for you!" — whereupon Chen rolls his eyes and they both crack up and everyone remembers that $1.65 billion dollars kind of makes them The Man and gets back to keeping it real (though Hurley keeps trying to salvage the "two kings" line ("the king of search...the king of video..."). Hurley's gotten most of the press thus far but Chen is pretty adorable with his toothy grin and dimply, pinchable cheeks. We especially liked it when he said "The most compelling part of this is being able to really concentrate on features and functionality for the community." And also, when he rolled his eyes. We don't know what third founder Jawed Karim had to say, as he left YouTube to be a graduate student in computer science at Stanford. Here he is in the very first YouTube video ever. Oh Jawed, we hope you negotiated one hell of a severance check.
The NYT likens the high-priced acquisition to the cash-flinging frenzy of the dot-com boom, but it's Microsoft's Steve Ballmer who hits it on the head: "If you believe it's the future of television, it's clearly worth $1.6 billion." Which is what business is all about right — identifying the potential before anyone else does. Largely unmonetized as it still remains, it's not tough to see the potential in YouTube. Nor is it tough to see an AWESOME science experiment, courtesy of our old pal Jawed. Ah, the wonders of chemistry and physics.
In the meantime, vote for your favorite Google-YouTube hybrid name in our exclusive HuffPo poll here, and marvel at how self-satisfied Larry Page looks about the deal here. Well, if you had $1.65 billion to throw around you'd look self-satisfied, too. Yup, guess Google really had a Lock on that acquisiton! Buying YouTube for $1.65 billion was a Steele!
In related news, if you would like to see what the YouTube community thought of Chad and Steve's video, you can view all 3,183 comments here.
