YouTube founders split $650M payout

Two of YouTube‘s founders stand to divide shares of stock now valued at around $650 million, Web search leader Google Inc. said in a regulatory filing Wednesday detailing the payout from its $1.65 billion acquisition.

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Chad Hurley, chief executive of the online video sharing phenomenon YouTube, received 694,087 shares of Google (Charts) common stock worth around $326 million, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Co-founder Steve Chen received Google common stock valued at a similar amount, including 625,366 shares directly owned and another 68,721 shares held in a trust.

Sequoia Capital, the sole venture capital backer of YouTube, stands to receive around $442 million in Google shares based on the $470.01 closing price of the Web search leader Wednesday.

At least two dozen YouTube employees received lesser share amounts. For example, Julie Supan, YouTube’s principal spokeswoman, received 10,308 shares worth around $4.8 million.

Most of the remaining shares were divided up among dozens of limited partner investors in Sequoia Capital.

Elite backers

These include a who’s who of the endowments of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Oxford and other elite colleges, and the investment vehicles of the families behind the Getty (Charts), Hewlett-Packard (Charts) and Intel (Charts) fortunes, among other beneficiaries.

The third co-founder, Jawed Karim, received stock valued at around $64.6 million. After starting the company in early 2005, he backed out and returned to Stanford University to work on a graduate degree in computer science.

The three co-founders had met while working together at online payments company PayPal, which was later acquired by Web auction company eBay Inc (Charts).

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., acquired YouTube, which is now located in Brisbane, near San Francisco, in November of last year.

YouTube enjoyed explosive growth during 2006 among viewers eager to watch short-form comic sketches created by other users. But its also has faced mounting legal threats from big media companies angry that the site has become a popular means of pirating their television shows.

Google had said at the time of the deal’s closing three months ago that one-eighth of the equity, or around $200 million, would be held in escrow as security on unspecified indemnification obligations.

Last week, Viacom Inc. (Charts) , owner of MTV Networks and several popular comedy programs often pirated by YouTube fans, demanded that the Google unit take down some 100,000 video clips of Viacom programming.

Originally posted by Reuters.