It appears that Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. I find that this follows along with their new mission for engineers to stop launching so many new services and instead make existing ones work together better. It is a sign that they are leaning away from a purely engineer driven approach, and leaning toward acquiring services that have done a better job than they have been able to do at reinventing the wheel.

YouTube will “remain an independent brand, in order to preserve its community” (Nathan). Google Video will still remain, but YouTube will get Google’s infrastructure and expertise. They’ll have smarter people helping them improve algorithms and features. Nathan has some great coverage of the conference call, and a summary of coverage around the web.

Along with the recent Google deals with Warner and Sony BMG, this means that Google and YouTube will have the means to monetize and legitimize their content.

Sources: spread throughout this post