Google Buys YouTube

YouTube Hosted on Zooomr

Google to Buy YouTube Hosted on Zooomr

Just saw the headline break across the bottom of my Bloomberg terminal. Google's buying YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

That's a lot of clams. It will be interesting to see what Mark Cuban has to say about this as he seemed to be saying that no one would ever buy YouTube due to copyright concerns.

It also will create one hell of a video jugernaut combining YouTube with Google Video.

"By Jonathan Thaw
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet
search engine, agreed to buy YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion,
adding the largest video-sharing site on the Web and an audience
that watches more than 100 million clips a day.
Founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen and their 65 employees
will join the company, Google said today in a statement
distributed by Business Wire. In less than two years, San Bruno,
California-based YouTube has catapulted from startup to Internet
icon with 34 million monthly U.S. visitors.
The stock purchase, Google's largest, underscores the
pressure on the Mountain View, California-based company from
startups such as YouTube and friend-finder Facebook.com, which
are creating new markets for film clips and social networking.
The acquisition also builds on Google's strategy to add more
content to attract advertisers.
``YouTube has huge traffic and is able to reach and appeal
to a whole new set of potential viewers,'' Scott Kessler, an
analyst at Standard & Poor's in New York, said before the
announcement. ``That's the key.''

Official story from Market Watch here.

Here is Google's official announcement.