Dow Jones Newswires | Google Inc.’s  YouTube on Thursday opened a
video rental store, the company’s latest step in its effort to
transform the popular video Web site into a profitable business.

The rental store features a variety of independent movies, Bollywood
content and television episodes. Rentals cost 99 cents to $3.99, with
fees paid through Google Check-out. Customers can view their rentals for
48 hours.

Google began experimenting with video rentals in January, when it announced it would make five films from the Sundance Film Festival available for rent on YouTube for one week.

“When we announced YouTube Rentals in January, we said we would be creating a destination after more partners joined the program,” said Google spokesman Chris Dale in a statement. “We have nearly 500 partners that have joined our rental program. Our community can expect more rental content to appear in the store in the weeks and months to come.”

While YouTube users can access the rental page, the company did not formally announce the store opening Thursday.

Google has been under pressure to boost revenue from YouTube, which it bought several years ago for $1.65 billion. The site, which gained prominence for its vast library of often wacky user-generated videos, has recently struck agreements with several Hollywood studios to distributed some of their content and share advertising revenue.

Google’s Web sites continued to dominate online-video viewing statistics in February, as the company nearly reached the 12 billion mark and took in 43 percent of all viewership, according to a recent report from comScore. YouTube was the main source of the traffic, accounting for 99 percent of all videos viewed through Google sites.