YouTube co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Steve Chen told Pop17's Sarah Meyers the leading video sharing site plans to start a live streaming service this year.

"We'll do it this year. Live video is something we've always wanted to do but haven't had the resources to do it correctly, but now with Google we hope to launch something this year," Chen said in the video posted by Sarah Meyers on her video blog.

"Live video is just something that we've always wanted to do, we've never had the resources to do it correctly," said Chen.

Live video on YouTube may well be integrated into Google's larger business plan. The same technology could be employed in an additional service for, let's say, Google Apps. It could provide videoconferencing and the such to companies, a very useful feature I might add.

The move will probably crush most of the smaller live video sites such as BlogTV, Livevideo, Stickam, and JustinTV, unless they get some real technology muscle behind them.

Chen and the other co-founder, Chad Hurley, sold YouTube last October to Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion. His Google shares are now worth more than $300 million.