“Google announced this afternoon that it would buy YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site, for stock that it valued at $1.65 billion,” Andrew Ross Sorkin and Jeremy W. Peters report for The New York Times.
“Google beat out a number of other YouTube suitors, including Microsoft, Viacom, Yahoo and the News Corporation. By successfully negotiating the deal, Google has once again proved that it is the Internet’s dominant player,” Sorkin and Peters report. “Under the terms of the deal, YouTube will retain much of its identity and will keep its name and its office in San Bruno, Calif., more than 25 miles from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View.”
Sorkin and Peters report, “The acquisition of the privately held YouTube will enable Google to thrive in one area of the Internet where it has so far failed to gain footing. According to Hitwise, which monitors Web traffic, has the lion’s share of online video traffic. YouTube has a 46 percent share, MySpace has 23 percent and Google Video has 10 percent.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “obvious” for the heads up.]
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WSJ: Google in talks to buy YouTube for $1.6 billion – October 06, 2006