Damn, that's a pretty big amount. Shareholders will get profits

Congratulations to Erik Voorhees and team!

The question is whether, under new management, the site will remain the integrity of its code -- and keep it open source.

Fair point. Transactions are verifiable -- and they can be aggregated and measured like dooglus does -- and that too reveals the integrity of the code.

But the popularity of the site really did in part derive from the integrity of the code, which was made open and verifiable.

If any of that would change -- even marginally -- it would surely be noticed, right?

I'm not sure it's good news satoshidice doesn't belong to the real economy. I'd rather wait for news from a dealer who would sell cars in BTC only. Still, it's an astonishing achievement. You could have bought several superb houses and many cars for that kind of money!

Very strange that someone paid so big amount for a business that lays in grey legal area. At any time (it is very naive to believe that it will never happens) govt can amend laws making Bitcoin gambling illegal which would mean lose 99% of the investment (going underground to TOR is not solution even to keep 10% of the current players IMHO).

more interestingly, not as far as I know

It depends on what bitcoin is currently worth, no? So it's 12 million now, 18 million in an hour or so and 5 USD 50 cents in 4 weeks.

Actually I'm not. With Mt Gox not sending out any withdrawals for weeks now and them trying to claw back withdrawals that have already happened, with Robot Ver completely failing to meet his sales targets, with Avalon not delivering for weeks, with Bitinstant shutting down,  where do you think BTC will be in 4 weeks?