Google Buys YouTube for US$1.65 Billion
Google has announced today that it will acquire the video sharing giant YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars in stock.
In the words of Google CEO, Eric Schmidt…
“The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful… our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.”
Founded in February 2005, YouTube is a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on YouTube and across the Internet through websites, blogs, and e-mail. YouTube currently delivers more than 100 million video views every day with 65,000 new videos uploaded daily and it has quickly become the leading destination on the Internet for video entertainment.
Following the sale of MySpace to Rupert Murdoch for US$580 million, YouTube is yet another story of a company starting out with an idea and in less than 2 years selling out for megabucks.
