Google Acquires YouTube To Strengthen Video Paid Search Leadership

After long speculation Google has finally acquired YouTube, a top video entertainment site, for 1.65 billion dollar, which is the highest price so far any company paid for a consumer-generated media site.

I believe this is a great acquisition of Google. With YouTube as a portal, Google will have full confidence in growing its business on video paid search. Google can now put behind it the miss opportunity of acquiring MySpace awhile ago when it has the chance.

However, it has been signs that Google will focus on video search, as it is one of its more successful vertical search projects. I remember Google used to have a Froogle link on its homepage, but awhile ago it has been replaced by the video search link.

YouTube was launched in February 2005 and in a time it has occupied 45.46% of the video download market share in terms of site visits. According to a Hitwise report in August, the video download market share in terms of visits looks like:

YouTube: 45.46%
MySpace Videos: 22.99%
Google Video: 10.25%
Yahoo! Video: 6.06%
MSN Video: 5.92%
Others: 9.32%

YouTube