tombo

Google Is Overpriced: Why Acquire On2 in an All Stock Deal?

Just so. When your company's stock is overvalued, the best thing you can do is use your overvalued stock to acquire undervalued companies, or else issue more overvalued shares on the market to get capital to expand internally.

When your stock is undervalued, you either use your extra cash to buy back your undervalued stock, or better yet, use your cash to acquire other companies that are even more undervalued than your own. You don't use your undervalued stock to acquire other companies.

Google's First Hubristic Leap: Competing With the Internet

Don't know why you think "This is terribly dangerous for Google". As you say it's competing with other sites out there like about.com, etc. It's not breaking any new ground, and it's not in any way competing with their search business.

This is just another one of dozens of content ideas cooked up by their engineers. Maybe it will pay off maybe it won't. It won't even be a blip on their earnings if it fails, and it probably won't add more than a fraction of a percent if it succeeds. A big yawn-fest if you ask me.

Google vs. Viacom: Google's Strategy

"The issue for the judge–assuming this ongoing spat gets before a jury–will be to decide who creates YouTube’s content"

I doubt that. I think that everyone knows who creates the content in question. It's Viacom.
The question is what are Google's obligations under DCMA as far as preventing the content from getting on Youtube in the first place. Per the DCMA, you don't need to do anything to prevent someone from posting copyrighted material. You just need to take it down once you get informed of the problem.
What Viacom will argue is that with so many different users uploading their shows, Google must do more than just take them down after they find them. Otherwise Google is effectively making money off Viacom's content.