The NY Times is all doom and gloom about the new Internet Bubble — citing the stratospheric valuations that have been bandied about for Facebook, etc. Not that I disagree, but I was amazed that the article failed to point out one major difference between Bubble 1.0 and Bubble 2.0: the IPO factor. In round one, the fuzzy math of Internet Startup Valuation was foisted on the public — and a lot of regular people lost big in the eventual bust. These days, an Internet IPO is a pretty scarce animal. If monoliths like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo want to battle it out — outbidding each other for the next big thing, should we really care? Even if they make a bad bet (as eBay apparently did with Skype), the long term impact on their investors is pretty negligible.