MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock deal that catapults the search giant to a starring role in online video distribution.

Nineteen-month-old YouTube, which has spawned a handful of imitators in the adult world — Pornotube.com and Porntube.com, for example — combines Google’s global technical infrastructure for serving up advertisements from its advertisers with YouTube’s leading position in serving up videos to users on the web.

San Bruno, Calif.-based YouTube claims surfers view the short videos more than 100 million times daily through its service, and it commanded 46 percent of visits to U.S. online video sites for September. That figure, according to market-research firm Hitwise, compared with a 21 percent share for the video activities of MySpace and 11 percent for Google Video.

The combination of Google and YouTube may make it easier to secure distribution agreements for copyrighted video content, but some legal analysts and industry executives say that YouTube could face copyright suits by some content owners who are already concerned that their copyright video and music is available without their permission.

Google still faces a suit with the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild over copyright infringement after it launched Google Books. That suit continues in U.S. District Court.

Source: XBiz