Google said that it has completed its $1.65 billion acquisition of rapidly growing video-sharing website YouTube.
The Mountain View, California, online search juggernaut paid for the hip Silicon Valley start-up with 32,17,560 shares of freshly issued stock.
"We are excited to have closed the acquisition in order to begin collaborating to offer the best in quality and depth of content, user experience and new business opportunities for our partners," Google chief executive Eric Schmidt said in a statement on Wednesday.
More than 100 million user-contributed video clips are viewed daily at YouTube, which was launched 18 months ago in San Bruno, California. Google continues to operate a similar website, Google Video.
"Google's expertise, technology leadership, and resources will provide us with the flexibility to innovate and build the best, most entertaining service on the Internet," said YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.
"The community will remain the most important part of YouTube and we are staying on the same course we set out on nearly one year ago."
Hurley said new YouTube features would be rolled out in the coming months.
{{/usCountry}}Hurley said new YouTube features would be rolled out in the coming months.
{{/usCountry}}Google was expected to apply its expertise at generating revenue from online advertising to YouTube.