The rumours were true; Google has indeed bought YouTube in an all stock deal worth $1.65. Whether this is a good idea will remain to be seen, but we discussed the various pros and cons of the deal in PodDev. Other details of the deal are:

• YouTube will retain its branding. This is a no-brainer; Google Video is no comparison to the YouTube brand.
• YouTube employees will remain at their current headquarters. This suggests that YouTube will be operating fairly independently from the rest of Google. I think this also makes sense, because YouTube is clearly doing well. Google can provide money and expertise to solve the ‘copyright problem’, without interfering with the day to day running.
• Google Video is ‘going nowhere’, according to Eric Schmidt, as reported by Arrington.
• Google says it wants to share revenues with those who provide videos to the site, a la Revver. This was reported on the 10 O’clock news on the BBC.

Interestingly, the first I heard of the news was from the BBC 10 O’Clock News - yet another example of the BBC embracing new media, and proof that there is no reason that old media can’t be fast off the blocks. I got details from lots of other places, obviously, like Techcrunch and YouMakeMedia. The official Google press release is here.