A bigger concern was that by the time of the acquisition it was clear that Google was buying a legal mess in the form of lawsuits that were spinning up from various Hollywood media companies. What wasn't clear (to many of us on the outside, at least) was that Google was prepared to deal with that and not go broke doing so.
I'm basing this on nothing, but at the time I thought Google figured that if Youtube lost the lawsuits it would destroy the video market for everyone, so they bought them with the intention of defending the lawsuits better than Youtube could have on their own.
