Google Seals the Deal with YouTube

Google announced today that is has officially finalized its $1.65 billion acquisition of the popular online video-sharing Web site YouTube.com. In a statement released earlier today, Google said that it issued 3,217,560 shares of its stock to cover the cost of the deal.

Setting a new record for total net value of a user-generated media site, the colossal deal also included around $15 million in funding which Google paid to YouTube between signing the deal in early October and closing the deal this month.

YouTube Co-founder and Chief Executive Chad Hurley said that the financial backing of a company like Google will allow YouTube the resources and flexibility to provide ground-breaking and original services to its users, while also stressing that the site would continue to operate independently from its new search giant parent company.

YouTube offers more than 100 million shared videos a day to its online visitors.

InfoSpace launches kid-friendly search engine

There’s a wealth of knowledge on the Internet, but there is also a world of harm for minors. InfoSpace is addressing that issue with Zoo.com, a search engine designed for kids. Zoo.com provides educational and child-appropriate search results from Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia and news content from ABC News, Fox News and Yahoo! News while filtering out adult content.

For more information, check out this new release: http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20061114005334&newsLang=en.