Cringely, once again, has a completely different take on YouTube.

YouTube was fooling us. The company allowed we pundits to think it was broke because it worked to YouTube's advantage to be perceived as broke. It was newsworthy, for one thing, and YouTube loves being in the news. Being broke made YouTube appear to be an underdog to the bigger boys like Google Video and Yahoo Video and consumers often like an underdog. And being broke strongly implied the company had shallow pockets, making it a less-than-desirable target for copyright infringement charges.

Only it turned out not to be true at all. YouTube runs at a considerable profit.

• why youtube is not (yet) the future of television

previously on wtg:

• Who has the upper hand in the online movie business? Is it too early for the upper hand to matter?
  
• cringely on adobe's master plan circa 1979
• cringely: osx will eventually allow osx to run on PCs
• cringely's 2006 predictions
• cringely: is tv coming to google or is google coming to tv?
  

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