Google looking to buy YouTube for $1.6B ?

Techcruch, the Web 2.0 info mill is starting to spread a rumor on the possible deal by Google to acquire YouTube for $1.6bn.

At last count, that amount figures out to about 10% of Google's warchest and you know what they say about giant gorillas -- they do pretty much what they want, how they want it. However, given the volume of traffic YouTube generates each day (some sources put their bandwidth burnrate at about $2 million per month) , the potential synergies that Google can derive from such an alliance is incredible.

But once again, copyright issues may throw a wrench in the deal as traditional media players are still pretty uptight about how their copyrighted content is being used and distributed. To some extent, bulk of YouTube's early popularity stemmed from exactly from the fact that it was easy to find and watch such copyrighted content on their site.

Also, given Google's knack in tweak good applications into great applications to gather more webshare to monetize, I think that this is going to be an interesting development as it plays out.

Once again, this is a completely unsubstantiated rumor but sure does make the mind boogle when it concerns Google.

[via : TechCrunch ]