Google after the bell for 10-10-06: Google shares lose a little as YouTube acquisition wears off

While the Dow reached new highs today, that news was moot in the Googleverse, as yesterday's Google-YouTube marriage took the media for a ride this morning, taking bloggers everywhere with it. In fact it's just been 24 hours and already I'm up to here (holding hand above head) with the Google-YouTube fancy dance.

Time will tell if Google bowed to unforeseen future events and really saw the future of online communication in an interactive (hopefully) video market marked entirely by being an Internet presence.

The market really didn't yawn about the Google buyout, but just went straight to bed, sending GOOG shares to close at $426.65, a decline of $2.35 or 0.55% over Monday's close. One thing this may do, though, is pressure Yahoo! to make some kind of stupid mistake and pay a billion or more for Facebook.com. If that happens, I'll have flashbacks to 2000 when M&A activity at the height of the dot-com explosion was earmarked for disaster.

In fact, I see a little of this in the Google purchase -- how on earth does YouTube generate cash flow? Can Google transform it into an ad-revenue-generating powerhouse somehow? Google will most likely use YouTube to keep customers in its network, something that is job number on at Yahoo! these days.