• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, September 1, 2011

YouTube expanded its movie service to Canada this week, making more than 1,000 full-length feature films from major Hollywood studios such as "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1," "Daydream Nation" or "The Adjustment Bureau" available for rent.

In May, YouTube Movies in the U.S. launched with about 3,000 titles. Competing with Netflix, which offers unlimited access to thousands of movies and TV shows for a flat monthly subscription rate of about $7.99, both the Canadian and U.S. sites allow consumers to rent new and classic movies for between $1.99 and $5. Apple iTunes also rents movies in Canada.

Consumers renting from YouTube Movies have 48 hours from the moment they begin to watch the rented movie to finish it, but 30 days to start viewing it. The YouTube site signed deals with Canadian studios as well as U.S. production companies to offer the digital reels.

With the drop in movie rental physical stores, it seems the perfect time for Google to jump in and widen its net in the online movie rental business. The company, however, will likely face hurdles with numerous content sites coming online. At least in the U.S. through Google TV, movie watchers have an option to access YouTube Movies and Netflix.

And while competition appears stiff to capture online movie dollars, at least in the U.S., Google sites appear to have the ability to bring in the Web traffic. Soon we could see more movies available on Android devices too.

In the U.S., Google sites and YouTube outpaced other top U.S. Web brands in July. Combine the unique user counts for Google search and its video site YouTube and it doubles that of Facebook's, according to Total Internet Audience metrics.

The new data from Nielsen combines online panel data and tag-based data from Web sites.

Google sites raked in 172.5 million unique users in July, followed by Facebook at 158.9 million, Yahoo at 148.6 million, and MSN/Windows/ Bing at No. 4 with 131.1 million. Google-owned YouTube came in at No. 5 with 126 million.