What does 1.65 billion dollars buy you these days? Well, if you are Google it buys you a popular free video sharing web site and a fair share of controversy.

YouTube, which lets users upload, view, and share video clips was founded in February 2005 by three early employees of PayPal. YouTube has made headlines recently due to the scuttlebutt concerning copyright violations. Most videos posted on YouTube are original, but the site also features a certain amount of copyrighted material. This problem has caused some pundits to predict the startup eventually would be sued into oblivion.

This recent purchase by Google is the latest in a line of purchases by the search engine behemoth. Last year Google spent $130.5 million buying a total of 15 small companies.

Video sharing websites appear to be all the rage these days as marquee names like MSN and Yahoo have announced their own video sharing services.