Tom Guarriello riffs on two shocking moments: the Yankees losing to Detroit in the playoffs and Google buying YouTube for $1.6 billion. He argues that wild ideas often pay off huge, and that predicting what happens next is basically impossible.
¡Hey, guys! ¿Cómo están? So, you know, a guy goes away for a weekend to visit his sister in Virginia, and what happens? The world turns upside down. First of all, Yankees, no good. Demolished by the Detroit Tigers. Um, when the Yankees beat the Tigers in Game 1 of the playoffs, uh, the other last week, last Thursday I guess it was, um, was it Thursday? I guess it was Thursday, whatever day it was. They won Game 1. You know, it was best 3 out of 5. If you'd have gone to Las Vegas after that first game and bet that it would be Tigers in 4? I don't know what the odds would have been, but I'm sure they'd have been like 100 to 1, easy. Okay, it happens. Then Google, YouTube, $1.6 billion purchase. All the smart guys Jason Calacanis, really smart guy. Mark Cuban, really smart guy. Let's see, listen, do you ever listen to TWiT? This Week in Tech? John C. Dvorak, never happened, never happened, stupid moron, only a moron would. I love Cubans. Only a moron would buy YouTube. Well, those two morons and their moronic friends out there at Google, $1.6 billion. So anyway, the world has turned upside down in the last 48 hours. You know, the Yankees lose to the Tigers, Google buys YouTube, what's next? North Korea? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We already know that's happened. What is next? What is next? Look, we live in a world when it's very— in which it is very difficult to predict things. There's an apocryphal— probably an apocryphal Yogi Berra attributed quote. Forecasting things is difficult. Predicting things is difficult, especially about the future. You see, we live in very chaotic times. Chaotic doesn't mean that, like, they're dangerous. It means that they're very, very difficult to predict. We now live in times when it is very difficult to predict things, and here we've just seen a couple of great examples of how difficult it is to really predict the future. What are we going to say about the YouTube-Google purchase? Most of us who are here making videos, watching videos, spending time, we probably think it's a great thing. Other people, smart people, think it's crazy. Think copyright, no good, big, big intellectual property problems for Google, deep pockets, all the things you hear. We live in difficult times to predict. And you know, if a week ago, if you would have parlayed Tigers in 4, Google for 1.6, you'd have gotten way more than 100-to-1 odds. So, um, don't let anybody tell you that you got crazy ideas, because crazy ideas make it today. So thanks, take care. I'm going back to mourn for my Yanks, but at least we still got Joe. Take it easy.
