YouTube Released A Movie Rental Service

As of May 9, if you head on over to http://www.youtube.com/movies you will see YouTube’s shiny, new movie rental service. Google announced the new service in a blog post on Monday, saying

“Today, we’re announcing another step in our goal to bring more of the video you love to YouTube: the addition of thousands of full-length feature films from major Hollywood studios available to rent in the US at youtube.com/movies. In addition to the hundreds of free movies available on the site since 2009, you will be able to find and rent some of your favorite films.”

The going rental prices are $3.99 for new movies, and $2.99 for old ones. The video library of movies available for rent consists of 3,000 major Hollywood films, including ones such as “Despicable Me”, “Inception”, and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. In addition to this massive collection, YouTube will continue to provide the 3,000 video library of free movies. This brings the total number of full-length films available on YouTube to well above 6,000!

Upon purchasing a movie rental, you will have 30 days to start watching it. Once you start it, you will have 24 hours to complete watching it, and then your rental will expire.

Google’s goals for their new movie service no doubt include competing with movie rental and purchase companies Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. Also, this is yet another attempt by Google to turn a profit with YouTube.

YouTube's movie rental homepage