It's true after all: Google will buy YouTube!

It's not a rumour anymore: Google will buy YouTube for $1.65 billion.

Web search leader Google Inc. said yesterday it agreed to acquire top video entertainment site YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in stock, the highest price yet paid for a consumer-generated media site.

The first deal to value one of the new generation of user-participation Web sites at more than $1 billion combines two of the most popular Internet brands: Google, synonymous with Web search and rapid innovation, and YouTube, a Silicon Valley upstart that has spearheaded the video-sharing craze.

But YouTube has been the target of criticism in the media industry for allowing pirated video clips to be uploaded. "YouTube until now has been a community garden. Once you get the corporate backing of Google I do think it becomes a more inviting target for lawsuits," said Jeff Lindgren, an intellectual property attorney with Morgan Miller Blair, a law firm in Walnut Creek, California.

What's left is to see how's Google going to face the imense river of potential lawsuits that flooded YouTube in the last few months.

From: Reuters Tech News