North Korea, Google and other Thoughts

There was an explosion (pun intended) of news today. Google finally put YouTube out it's misery and purchased it for a cool $1.65 Billion. Lots of analysis on the deal from ValleyWag, Crazy Mark, John Battelle, and others.

Personally, I think Google is the big winner out of the deal. They only spent $1.65 Billion on the deal, which to them (and their current market valuation $130B's), is chump change. Simply put, This deal has lots of upside for Google. Google gains and loses $1 Billion each day depending on how the market fluctuates, so even if this deal doesn't work out, there not out that much money.

The other big news was that North Korea decided to test their nuclear bomb today, which was met with pleasantries from all world leaders. President Bush reacted with his same old demands of politely asking that North Korea return to 'six-party talks', while all along, this whole situation could be prevented (as even North Korea would admit to) if the United States would deal directly with North Korea.

Why can't our president get it right? The 'reason' he went into Iraq was because he thought that they had WMD. However, we have found out, that Iraq never had WMD but instead, the 'real' country we should have been a hard-ass with, developed and tested a bonafide atomic bomb.

Now, our military is caught-up in a quagmire in BFE, meaning all we can do is make empty threats to the countries who start developing real WMD. North Korea knows that we're not going to do anything (unless they do something really moronic like attack South Korea or Japan) and Iran doesn't have to worry about anybody (except Israel) taking out their nuclear facilites. (As a side note, Robin Williams - yes, that Robin Williams, made a great point about why George H.W. Bush didn't take out Saddam in 1991 on the Bill Maher Show on Friday night. Here's a link to the transcript.)

I'm really not sure how this one will turn out. Sure, we can sanction North Korea into oblivion, but I doubt even that will get through the thick head of their leader Kim Jung Il. Japan nor South Korea have enough military firepower to pose any serious threat to North Korea. China, Russia, France and Germany are all too scared to fire a shot. That leaves the US with very few options.

Read More: North Korea, Google, YouTube, Frankly Speaking