Google's acquisition of YouTube for $1.65bn in shares has certainly made two people happy. Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, the young founders of YouTube, have set a record for the biggest financial payoff in the shortest time. The enterprise has barely been running for a year and is still headquartered in offices above a pizza parlour in Silicon Valley. Yet it has been bought for a price equivalent to $25m for each of its 67 employees.

Whether or not it proves irrational, exuberance has certainly returned to parts of the internet sector. There is no earnings or revenue calculation that could make sense of what Google has paid for YouTube. Instead, rather like eBay's $2.6bn purchase of Skype and News Corporation's $580m acquisition of MySpace, this is a land grab. YouTube has attracted so many enthusiasts and videos that Google wanted a bigger piece of the action.