[x0x0]

A guess: (and note they kept youtube a wholly owned subsidiary I think) they desperately had to make sure the Viacom lawsuit defense was well funded and aggressively defended or it would severely damage Google's business.

Also, google has now had success building photo sites / photo products, but at the time of the youtube purchase, hadn't had much success building a video product.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._Y....