CNET just posted a story claiming that Google will start dumping feature-length movies on YouTube. IMHO, this is a terrible idea. As Dan Rayburn pointed out just two days ago, Google has not been able to improve the basic underlying infrastructure of the service since they acquired the company two years ago.

Just yesterday I was watching a History Channel documentary that someone uploaded to YouTube, and I constantly had to wait for the thing to buffer. It was driving me crazy. That’s because YouTube is not a streaming service, it’s a progressive file download. They don’t use Flash Media Server, they don’t use a CDN, and apparently they don’t care about the user experience, either.

So why would Google want to exponentially exacerbate the situation by adding content that’s 10x as long to their network?

And how would Google prevent the underlying Flash video from being saved and used for other purposes? I know there are several browser add-ons that can save Flash video, and specifically YouTube videos, so how would Google get around this?

In the end, it just seems pointless, because without an infrastructure update, there is no way Google can out-Hulu Hulu… they just have a better experience.

[img]http://www.windows-now.com/aggbug.aspx?PostID=46509[/img][img]http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WindowsNow-Main/~4/444587885[/img]

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/WindowsNow-...rible-idea.aspx