Google: 'We won't ruin YouTube'

Google has said it will protect the YouTube brand and aim not to "break the bond" the video-sharing site has with its users.

Mark Howe, country director of UK sales at Google, said: "We do not want to break that bond with the [YouTube] users." Google is also keen to speak with advertisers about how to engage consumers with future YouTube-Google advertising products.

He added: "We're not just immediately going to go in with an interruptive ad model that is television-involved."

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Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn last year and speculation has been rife over how the search engine will make money out of the site.

Howe said it is still "early days" for the Google-YouTube union, adding there's "no rush" to change YouTube's advertising models over the next year.

One possible model is YouTube's offer to share online ad revenues with users who upload videos to the site - provided they hold the copyright to the content.

Google began sharing advertising revenue with the makers of the popular Coke-and-Mentos video that appeared on YouTube last year.

Howe said: "Across this year we will be working on a number of different models for both video and YouTube advertising."

Google saw sales of $3.2bn in its fourth-quarter, a rise of 67 per cent from last year - beating analyst predictions by more than $1bn.