Y’know, I noticed Youtube only downloads about 60-80K a sec, suggesting their already constrained. Really, if they owned an OC12 or two that can deliver 600 mbits a sec (roughly a threshold of a theatrical 60 megs a sec) that’d service 1000 people at any given time.Now occasionally Youtube dips and like many streaming services you have to way for buffering as it takes roughly 70k sustained to keep ahead of the playlist because the flash video the use is roughly about that. So really they don’t thave to be able to deliver a continuous 70k a sec. Hosting at this point wouldn’t be about how much bandwidth your using, just the lease on the Fiber-optics lines.
However, it still doesn’t escape the fact THEY HAVE NO FUCKING ADs. I remember reading that the owner of Youtube supposably secured a few million in venture capital but I can’t imagine how that’ll last. I imagine the Youtube site is mostly in the vain of being bought out like Myspace or Facebook.
According to News.com they’ll slowly introduce ads
http://news.com.com/Is+YouTube+a+flash+in+the+pan/2100-1025_3-6089886.html
And they have a deal (although nothing has been said really) with NBC.