Robert Young of GigaOm wrote on August 21st that Apple should acquire YouTube and launch itself into one of the Net's top property owners. YouTube is now ranked as the 40th most popular web site and, for strategic reasons, Young feels it would be a perfect match with Apple's iTunes video distribution. Now everyone is joining the fray. Even the New York TImes thinks it's a good idea.

Now, I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record when I say this but the YouTube phenomenon was predictable. I promoted a version of the service beginning some 2 1/2 years ago, about a year and a half before YouTube saw the light of day. But this is Canada and our team (which had some serious manpower behind it) just could not get local investors interested in the project. After all, "where's the revenue model." Rumour has it that YouTube is on the block for one-billion dollars. Is that a good enough return Canada? If our moribund VC industry wants to emulate VCs south of the border, it has to be willing to take risks that are proportionate to the rewards and stop nickel-and-diming every good idea to death.

Not every deal has to beat the entrepreneurs down to chump change guys.

YouTube could have been Canadian. Why not? There is nothing to prevent us serving bits from Toronto equally as well as L.A. But, we missed it just like we've missed many other opportunities. Flickr somehow got through the morass. Lucky for them they were in B.C., closer to the U.S. west coast.