Guest post by Rusty Speidel, founder of Rowdy.com.

I’ve been reading all week about the incredible numbers surrounding the Groupon/Google deal. Six billion dollars is a LOT of cash for a digital business, no matter how mature. There are so many pundits on both sides of this thing that it’s starting to make me dizzy and I have to say everyone has been making some pretty compelling arguments. The more I read about the dizzying growth numbers at Groupon, the more convinced I became that Andrew Mason and his VC backers did the right thing by walking away.

But then the one benefit of being 50 and a 20-year veteran of the digital space kicked in – perspective. My memories of the internet boom of the ’90s came flooding back and I recalled heady times full of those goofy IPOs, the Time-Warner/AOL deal, AltaVista (who?), Inktomi, and Amazon-killer Value America. Remember Pets.com? History. EA.com? Dead. AOL? A shadow of its former self. ShopNBC? Still around, but I can’t remember the last time I visited. (more…)