NBC Bounces Over to Another Bubble Fear

All that was missing was the pets.com sock puppet.

On the heels of the Google purchase of YouTube, NBC warned of another dot-com bubble on the horizon. [See here for more on NBC's fixation on the "housing bubble."]

Of course, some experts will warn that's the worst-case scenario while others tend to think that the billions spent on YouTube will not lead to an escalating arms race for its less popular competitors like MetaCafe.

Meta what, you just said? Yeah, thought so. Here's a taste of my article. You can find the complete story here:

Over an onscreen graphic that read “Internet Insanity: Is the Dot.Com Boom Back,” Quintanilla suggested the Google purchase of YouTube may presage another “dot-com bubble” like the one that bedeviled the stock market, and the economy, in 2000.

YouTube’s purchase “is being compared to some of the big buyouts of the Internet boom of the late ’90s and we all know how that turned out,” Quintanilla added ruefully before showing an analyst warning that “we may be heading down the path towards yet another Internet bubble.”

Some caution may not be unreasonable, but not everyone has as bleak a view of what the Google acquisition portends for the dot-com industry.

“I think some media conglomerates will make small acquisitions and you might see some that make some surprising moves based on the YouTube deal,” David Carson, co-CEO of video Web site Heavy.com told CNNMoney.com’s Paul R. La Monica.

In other words not all future buyouts will be as nearly eye-popping as Google’s purchase of YouTube, although some companies can afford larger price tags.