>As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see

>As to purchasing a competitor: Sure, if you're purchasing it because it adds to your capabilities then it seems fairly straightforward. That's not what we see here. Here, we have an example of purchasing them when, at this stage, Google saw little or no value in it except as a means to limit competition. You're interpreting the email screenshots incorrectly. I think you need to carefully re-read them and mentally note that there are _2_ different people expressing 2 different opinions: Jeff Huber & Peter Chane. - Jeff Huber (Google Ads team): he initially brings up the question about a Youtube acquisition and sees them as additive to Google because he sees their team iterating on new features faster. He perceives the Youtube team as a "passionate" bunch. He also sees value in getting Youtube's assets and existing deals if Google buys them. Jeff sees synergy with buying them because he predicts that Youtube will eventually need a more scalable backend (think of Google's big datacenters) -- and monetization... and as a convenient coincidence... Jeff is in the ads team. - Peter Chane (Google Video team): he pushes back because he thinks his Google Video team will eventually build the same Youtube features anyway by 4th quarter. He's the one who wrote Google acquisition of Youtube purchase would be "defensive". You're giving too much weight to one person's opinion (Peter Chane). However, PC is not the ultimate decision maker for Google to buy Youtube. Maybe we can use some common sense about Peter Chane's perspective. If Peter were to wholeheartedly agree with Jeff Huber, that would mean.... he's admitting that he & his team are not competing as well as those Youtube guys. So it would be understandable human nature for him to think the Youtube acquisition would accomplish nothing but take them away from Yahoo. It looks like Jeff Huber (and later Susan Wojcicki) championed buying Youtube because of the value there. It seems that Peter Chane's opinion was discounted or ignored. You don't have war meetings about the risks of fighting the multi-million dollar lawsuit with Viacom as a consequence of buying Youtube, and then subsidizing Youtube's money-losing business for years if you saw no value in them.