On the YouTube front, I'd argue that things are not really a "steal" unless we they were purchased for well below market value at the time. I don't know that we have much evidence that Google underpaid by a lot given circumstances at YouTube (they were burning through cash pretty fast).
Fair point. There may have been very few, if any, parties willing to pay what Goog paid for YT. From that angle, it hardly looks like a steal.
But if you think about YT's growth and strategic fit since the acquisition, it looks like a steal for 1.6B. Meaning, had a competitor known that YT could be such a key to google, there would be many more takers for it.
