Is Fox Buying YouTube?

Will Fox buy YouTube? We'll call this speculation for now, and I'll tell you why a bit later. But first, is YouTube for sale, or can the company make it on its own, covering its $1 million plus in monthly bandwidth charges, potential lawsuits, and timid advertisers?

It's rumored that YouTube CEO Chad Hurley has a vague price in mind. Let's say it's a shade over a ~~million~~ oop... Billion Dollars. Would Rupert Murdoch buy YouTube for $1 Billion Dollars?

There is much speculation that Fox may buy YouTube. I'm not sure I'd trust a guy with a tie and a single strand of hair (Beasley J. Lichtenstein, pictured at right). But let's speculate.

What would happen if Fox bought YouTube? Would all the "unlicensed content" be cleared out, leaving the Lonely Girls, the Dancing Boys, and the Geriatrics to do all the programming. Alongside Fox's brilliant fare, how bad could it be??

Is an ambitious feature-length Cops knock-off really any better or worse than Fox's original Cops?

Would NBC, Sony, Time Warner, and other competitors more vigorously demand that unlicensed content be removed?

How long could a corporate YouTube keep its fans before something more edgy comes along? Would Murdoch drag YouTube and MySpace down into corporate pablum together, or will he package them up into a glitzy web company and walk away with a bundle first?

If Lichtenstein did one thing, it was to elicit this brilliant comment from a purported Myspacer:

It really will be the downfall of it... myspace sucks ass now. I used to meet chicks all the time.. now I get emails from bands and tv shows. What's up with that...

Thank you for the thought.

Others can come right out and tell you Why Murdoch Won't Buy YouTube.

And speaking of ~~MySpace~~ FaceBook, they're really in the news these days, and are thinking up bigger and better things. Things that could take them along to being like MySpace. Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg is talking about expanding from a user-base of current students only, to opening up to General Registration.