Why YouTube Is Ready for Prime Time

With attention like this, you know what happens next. No one is satisfied with making anything merely popular or artistic anymore. You've got to make money from it. And in this case, the numbers thrown around are as crazy as anything we heard about in the early days of Yahoo!(YHOO Quote), Amazon.com(AMZN Quote) and eBay(EBAY Quote).

Losing Money for Fun and Profit

Although shares of these three horsemen of the Internet are pretty much on the skids now, they are still up 1,300% to 3,000% since they first sold shares to the public seven to 10 years ago. At the time, except for eBay, no one was quite sure how any of these money-losing operations was ever going to turn a profit.

And skeptics were all quite sure that larger media and software companies would eat their lunch and spit out the bones. But incessant innovation, compelling content, clever management and a lot of good luck helped them all prove the naysayers wrong and make their early supporters rich.

So now the inevitable question arises: Will YouTube.com hit the public market anytime soon, and if so, what's a company that flamboyantly loses $20 million a year worth these days?

The short answer is maybe a lot -- or next to nothing. It depends on how well the company navigates a looming legal confrontation with copyright owners. In the most lucrative scenario, YouTube would toss minor equity stakes to major corporate owners of songs and shows its users borrow for spoofs and karaoke performances.