There is so much abandoned and bullshit video on there, it couldn't possibly be worth it.
I'd hope that the company that runs Google Books, that saw the value in ReCaptcha, that has cached the majority of the public-facing internet, that has mapped most regions of the world, and that provides satellite images of most of its surface wouldn't erase that data simply because they'd like to reuse the harddrives.
If you want people to trust you with their data, you should demonstrate more responsibility. And just because the hosting's been "free", doesn't mean you haven't made your pound of flesh off the advertising (speaking generally, at least).
Here's a thought: Shove it through YouTube. Heck, just keep the data around and convert and cache when an item is hit (those who really want it will wait out / return after the conversion). I suppose you need to be able to tie back to Video accounts for ownership, DMCA, etc. Still, there should be a better solution. And a couple of weeks' notice simply isn't fair. What if someone's tied up? On vacation? They're hosed.
Put it this way: Demonstrating yourself to be a source of "public" data loss, is rather bad PR.
On the upside, they are "allowing" downloads. I guess I should acknowledge that as a serious positive.
I may have become sensitized by years of management that had similar attitudes towards changes. Push, push, push... until suddenly, we're abandoning this, NOW.
Different settings, but not entirely dissimilar feelings evoked.
Uploading was also stopped in 2009, so crying foul now is just unwarranted.
Yeah, that would never fit in at... youtube.
In all seriousness though, I thought google video had shut down years ago. It must have just been a phase in its shutdown, but I could have sworn it was already gone.