360 Degrees of Google

I'd be patient with Google. As you'll see in my earlier piece, Google appears to be starting a significant move higher, however, I think you'll be able to get it for cheaper soon. After all, with the momentum-oriented crowd already in the stock, who is left to do some anticipatory pre-earnings buying?

Google Still Gets It, by Cody Willard

Originally published on RealMoney on Oct. 9 at 10:33 a.m. EDT

As I wrote more than a year ago in a post titled "Google Gets It," I've owned Google(GOOG Quote) since the day it came public. I plan to own it for a very long time indeed, in large part because the company understands that distribution is the key to the content revolution.

Google doesn't want to waste time, money or energy on owning content and especially not on creating content. No, Google understands that because all of us can now create and publish content of any sort, from the written word (blogs) to audio words (podcasts) to video (YouTube) -- it doesn't want to compete with all of that exploding competition.

The money is in organizing and distributing that content in a simple, straightforward and respectable manner. As billions of people on this planet come online and look to consume that content, Google's positioned itself to be an agnostic distributor. Acquiring YouTube makes tons of sense.

After the deal was announced, Willard wrote:

I expect that partly because of this smart acquisition, Google will be closer to whatever its 52-week high is this time next year.

At the time of publication, the firm in which Willard is a partner was net long Google, although positions can change at any time and without notice.

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Three Ways of Valuing the YouTube Deal, by James Altucher

Originally published on RealMoney on Oct. 10 at 2:29 p.m. EDT

A lot of good articles and analyses of the YouTube-Google deal have already been done -- many on this site and others that I've mentioned in my Blog Watch columns on Friday, Monday and today (and will undoubtedly mention tomorrow, too). So while I'm reluctant to write yet another, some interesting things are still left to look at.

It's important to view almost all of the articles out there with a good filter. How come? For one thing, everyone is jealous. Maybe I'm weaker than most, but I know that I am. Chad Hurley is a 29-year-old Web designer who could be working on Web sites for $15 an hour. Instead, he started YouTube 1 1/2 years ago and is now worth about $200 million in Google stock. That means at some point in the next five to 15 years, he'll be worth $1 billion if he never sells his Google stock. Meanwhile, he dances to work every day because he probably has the best job in the world. Congrats, good luck and I'm still jealous.

A lot of people out there are arguing about the valuation of the deal, taking sides on whether it's overvalued or undervalued and citing various metrics. Here are a few ways to look at valuation: