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In a surprising move for the sluggish CondeNet (Wired, a brand founded on the Internet's future, has just gotten around to hosting video on its website), Conde Nast is partnering with YouTube to distribute videos from its media empire — and getting a slice of the advertising revenue.

To help fuel the bottom line, CondeNet has finagled a deal that allows it to sell the advertising for YouTube-hosted videos and sharing revenues with Google. We're not sure whether to view this as against-the-herd thinking — most big media companies like Viacom, NBC, and News Corp., are fighting YouTube by creating their own video websites and players — or an admission that CondeNet doesn't really believe in the video technology Wired just rolled out. Or, more likely, that the various arms of Si Newhouse's empire are continuing to studiously ignore each other.