YouTube was close to selling to Yahoo. How Google sealed the $1.65 billion deal at 3 A.M. in a Denny’s parking lot

Google’s $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube had been finalized in early hours of an October morning in 2006. That was when executives signed the merger documents on the hood of a car in Denny’s parking lot in Redwood City, California.

David Drummond, Google’s general counsel and Gideon Yu, YouTube’s chief financial officer, were using the light from their BlackBerry phones to read the documents, as per a report. That’s when a police officer approached them at around 3 am. The officer questioned why they were meeting in the parking lot, Yu explained that they were signing a merger agreement and showed him the paperwork. The officer told them to carry on.