This is going to be big news when it reaches the blogosphere: according to the press wires, YouTube's founders and investors at Sequoia Capital have filed to sell 3.23 million of the shares in Google they received during the acquisition in October last year.
Founders Hurley and Chen have registered to sell stock worth $326.2 million each (valued using today's closing price). Jawad Karim, the quiet "third founder", has registered to sell 137,443 shares worth around $64.6 million - and all these guys are in their late twenties. Sequoia could sell shares worth $504.4 million, according to a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Four months later, I'm still optimistic that YouTube was a good buy for Google. The achievements of Hurley, Chen and "the other one" will likely be the Silicon Valley fairytale of the next few years: proof that a small idea can change the world in a matter of months. But we've also seen a lot of casualties along the way. What's more, it's not really clear where the next YouTube will come from - we like Flip.com, Flixster and LiveVideo, but none of these seem to be world-changing.