Mark Cuban recently reposted an interesting “insider” tidbit from the Google + Youtube deal:

Since everyone was reaching into Google’s wallet, the big G wants to make sure the Youtube purchase was a wise one. Youtube’s value is predicated on it’s traffic and market leadership which Google needs to keep. If they simply agreed to remove all unauthorized content and saddle the user experience with ads Youtube would quickly be a skeleton of its prior self. Users would quickly move to competing sites. The media companies had 50 million reasons to want to help. Google needed a two pronged strategy which you see unfolding now.

To sum it all up, they claim that Google set aside a large portion of the $1.65 Billion to “pay off” the big media companies in a secret escrow account. In exchange, they agreed to drop all pending lawsuits to prevent the type of demise predicted here on BBB (and several other places). It will be interesting to see how people react at such an accusation. Since lawsuits are public record, it should be relatively simple to show companies suing much smaller video competitors for content which is already on Youtube’s site.

We’ll update you, precious readers, as this story develops.