The BBC have a summary of a range of blog postings about Google’s acquisition of YouTube. I personally think that Jupiter Research’s comment
YouTube’s got nothing tech-wise that umpteen other user-created video sites can’t replicate. But they do have brand cachet, and, for now, audience. That’s what Google’s getting for its $1.65bn.
sums up rather well why Google have made the move, given that they already have Google Video anyway.