Internet giant and innovator Google is in talks to buy popular video clip sharing service YouTube.com.  The price tag is roughly $1.6 billion dollars.

Founded in Feb. 2005, closely-held YouTube is the poster child for the boom in online video. The company says consumers view videos — which range from short home videos to clips recorded from TV shows — over 100 million times daily through its service and upload more than 65,000 videos each day. YouTube, San Mateo, Calif., has efforts underway to generate more advertising revenue from such traffic. At the same time, it’s trying to address some media companies’ concerns about the presence of video on YouTube’s site that was uploaded without the content owners’ permission.

A purchase of YouTube could give a big boost to the online video efforts of Google. YouTube commanded 46% of visits to U.S. online video sites in August, according to market research firm Hitwise. That compared to a 23% share for the video activities of News Corp.’s MySpace social-networking site, and 10% for Google Video.

The discussions are the latest evidence of a land grab underway by Internet and media companies looking to extend their reach on the Web. Yahoo Inc. and other technology and media companies have held discussions about acquiring social networking site Facebook Inc. for amounts in the range of $1 billion or higher, say people familiar with the matter. News Corp. spent $650 million to buy MySpace last year.