YouTube was first, and that's the one most important thing.

It is easier played movies, first there, great for distrubutions and no restrictions.

Ludwik I am not sure I agree on that. I thought that YouTube and Google Video were pretty much identical in terms of feature sets.

But recently I saw what YouTube has extra. YouTube is much more of a community. There are whole fairy tales that happen there. There are characters behind the usernames. People can subscribe to other people's content within the system. In that way it is a huge source of video blogs and that is what the people making them on YouTube often call them themselves.

On the other hand Google Video is just a plain catalog of content. I have never taken notice of the username associated with a video on Google Video. On YouTube it is hugely important.

The other way in that YouTube really wins out is its wealth of content. It has everything.

The wayback machine shows Google Video online 2/05
The wayback machine does not have any youtube.
Wikipedia says youtube started in 2/05

I'd say they started about the same time. In my opinion, Youtube has too many features. Favorite videos? I'm just going to watch a video once, and move on. All you need is videos. Maybe I'm google-biased, but I prefer Google Video.