Google Inc, the most-used Internet search engine, agreed to buy YouTube Inc. The purchase price is $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.”
In total visitors, the purchase vaults Google to second place among U.S. Internet companies from third. The two brands combined had 101 million visitors in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Yahoo! Inc. sites had 106.7 million and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN Internet division had 98.5 million.
Related Posts
- YouTube Sued by Italian Media Company for Half a Billion Euros
- Google quizzed over YouTube plans
- Google to Buy YouTube.com?
- Viacom Demands That Google Pull More Than 100,000 Clips From YouTube; Site Is Complying
- Is Yahoo! now under the gun after losing YouTube?
Loading ...
man MySpace got royally screwed. 574 million and actually makes a profit plus higher traffic and YouTube gets 3 times as much.
wow i figured this was coming.
WTF! google has their own video service. why did they need to buy youtube? waste of money.