Why did Google spend over a billion dollars to buy YouTube? To avoid competition with Google Video? To tap into YouTube content? To utilize YouTube technology? It appears Google bought YouTube for the information they could learn about user habits.

Eric Schmidt spoke at the Web 2.0 Conference the other day and he shed light on a little of their strategy. According to Steve Bryant, YouTube’s “huge user base will allow Google’s servers to better understand what users want on the Web.”

“The underlying draw is to see what users are doing and have computers suggest related or adjacent content. It is a whole new paradigm and important to users,” Schmidt said.
So this data from the collective habits of YouTube users will help Google refine their ad-serving engines. And he’s betting that is worth a bunch more.

Interesting.