Google will buy YouTube?

It seems that Google is interested in buying YouTube, the biggest free video player in the Web, for 1.6 billion dollars according to some recent news in the Wall Street Journal.

This technique based on the idea of "If you can't beat them, join them" (but with a more agressive touch of "If you can't beat them, buy them and then merge with your own service") seems all but a good idea for Google.

Even though after this acquisition, Google would own more than 50% of this market of free video in the Web (40% of YouTube and 11% of Google Video), it hardly seems true that Google is interested in "collecting" the million-dollars law suits that YouTube is getting everyday on copyright issues.

Anyway, these are only rumors at this point :-)

From: ars technica