The Google – Youtube – Conundrum
blogmaverick.com
blogmaverick.com
In general, all of Google's businesses are built to take advantage of large technological trends. Bandwidth will get cheaper and they have found other ways to decrease the cost, e.g. having users click on the HQ/HD button. Fundamentally, Google has always believed that any content out there should eventually be made free because there will be almost no transaction cost with technology. The only way to make money off it is through targeted advertising.
In other words, he is far from unbiased. He does disclose this in his other blog postings, though, so he's generally not trying to hide anything but instead argue why his solution is better.
Google can not keep subsidizing its search users! Clearly they work great, but the tech demo is over, and its not as effective at selling their corporate search product as it should be, they need to get out of web search and do X!
Its entirely possible that Google will do something other than "charge users" to make Youtube profitable, since Google pretty much hasn't done that for any of their other products.
Sometimes what works is a sideways shift and not "monetize what you're already doing".
For myself, I don't have a problem paying for hosting. But I'm sure to use it when it's offered for free.
I'm interested in what Google/YouTube can do for customization, particularly in the chromeless/API arena. I'd definitely pay for HD chromeless at the right price.
Furthermore, I doubt much bandwidth (youtube->viewer) is wasted on the crap.