On Monday, October 9, 2006, Google Inc. the Internet’s leading search engine declared its decision to purchase YouTube, the popular video-sharing site, for $1.65 billion in stock (assets). YouTube, which was started in February 2005, has quickly become the most famous of several online video sites. According to Internet research firm Hitwise, YouTube has approximately a 46 percent share of the online video market. 100 million videos are watched on the YouTube’s flash based site every day, including movie, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content. While Google has been riding away huge profits from the prospering search market, it could not become a major player in online video. The combination of Google and YouTube could increase Google’s power in online advertising, giving it an advantage over rivals such as Yahoo! (Charts), Microsoft’s (Charts) MSN and News Corp (Charts)., which owns the social networking site MySpace. Google had taken this decision speculating that the popular video-sharing site will favor it an increasingly advantageous marketing hub as more viewers and advertisers are migrating from television to the Internet. Google announced that two companies would be operated independently. As the Youtube’s agreement with Google appeared to be success, it announced new partnerships with Universal Music Group, CBS Corp. and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.