Just wondering, I didn't read it word through word, as I should be working right now, but wasn't it an option to contact youtube, as the ToS make mention that you can monetize the ads if you have prior approval by youtube and its worth it for google, as they have embedded ads. And the site was prominent enough for them to take serious.

I certify I am over 18 years old and/or over the age at which I am considered an adult in my country of residence.

YouTube is a huge money sink for Google at the moment, so it's not surprising that they don't want others building profitable verticals using their bandwidth.

It's a pity, but it's understandable.

[Update: Added a data visualization image in the post.]

I'm surprised it took YouTube this long to get on this case.

Based on what I see, the cost to host these videos would be $1400-2000/month ($2000/month using Amazon EC2); and that's primarily because of bandwidth.

It may cost YouTube a bit less, but streaming videos is always heavy on the wallet!

> YouTube is a huge money sink for Google at the moment, so
> it's not surprising that they don't want others building profitable
> verticals using their

They can embed ads in videos, no? If it doesn't work out, why would they offer embedding in the first place?

> They can embed ads in videos, no?

I'm pretty sure Google still only embeds ads in videos from content partners, and from members who are revenue sharing. I think Google doesn't include ads in random videos uploaded by Joe Public, because many of them are copyright infringements and Google doesn't want to be seen to be making money from those.

> If it doesn't work out, why would they offer embedding in the first place?

To build mindshare and marketshare, in the hope of (somehow) making the service profitable in the future.

Embedding was available in YouTube before it was bought by Google, and in my opinion was one of the two things that made YouTube grow much faster than Google Video (the other was the free-and-easy "upload anything" policy of YouTube's early days).

Question about this statement from a "content creator" towards the end of the interview:
"we have limited resources when it comes to distributing ..."

How is this a problem when uploading their content once to Totlol? The actual streaming of videos from that point on would have been done by Totlol?

> How is this a problem when uploading their content once to Totlol?

Assume for example once to YouTube, Yahoo, Google, Metacafe, Openfilm, Joost, Myspace, Dailymotion, Vimeo, Veoh, BlipTV, CortoonsTV, Crackle, Viddler, MyHeavy, Zannel and their own site, with not necessarily the same videos to each, with new ones added weekly, and sometimes removed and a few connection errors here and there and you get "we have limited resources when it comes to distributing".