Sep 13, 2010 08:19 GMT  ·  By

YouTube is finally making the step everyone has been anticipating for years, for two days only, it will be streaming live shows from a few select partners. Live streaming has always been "coming soon" to YouTube and, while this is just an initial test, the features is now closer to reality than ever.

"From U2 to the Indian Premier League to the White House to E3, we've worked closely with our partners to give you a front row seat to a wide array of live events," Joshua Siegel, Product Manager, and Christopher Hamilton, Product Marketing Manager at Google, wrote.

"Today and tomorrow, tune in as we open a new chapter of YouTube live streaming. Starting at 8:00 a.m. PT, we will begin a limited trial of a new live streaming platform in conjunction with four of our partners: Howcast, Next New Networks, Rocketboom and Young Hollywood," they announced.

The two day test of the new live-streaming platform is a preview of things to come. YouTube plans to open up the platform to all partners in the not-too-distant future.

YouTube has been testing the live-streaming platform internally for at least the past few months. And it has been planning such a feature for several years, as far back as 2007.

It's not the technical details that postponed plans to launch the live streaming platform, rather, the issues of handling live content on the scale YouTube operates at.

With very little control over the content being streamed, especially if the feature would be enabled for everyone, YouTube would be counting the days until something nasty would happen.

YouTube is not making too many promises. If the testing goes smoothly YouTube will consider rolling out the feature to more partners worldwide. There's no word on making it available for regular users any time soon.

So Ustream, Justin.tv and company don't have a direct competitor yet. But the move is clearly raising some alarms at those companies.

You can check out the schedule for the two-day trial below. Users will also be able to comment on the live streams so the broadcasters will be able to get direct feedback from their viewers.