It would be a bad move to require people to pay for the current level of service, but some people would pay to loose the ads.
And I like the idea of them adding "premium" content and stepping into the ring with Netflix, Hulu and amazon.
I really can't imagine myself paying to watch any of the currently-free videos on YouTube. I'm not talking about the copyrighted stuff people upload illicitly, but rather the ordinary user-generated content. I mean, some of it is funny, and some of it is interesting to me because I share a common interest with the poster (flying, fishing, or whatever); but none of it is worth paying for.
If it were a small flat rate for a year that would also remove the ads (and the tracking that goes along with them), then possibly I might consider it; but even then, I doubt it.
Also, if ordinary users had to pay to watch content generated by other ordinary users, then I think the users would flock away to Dailymotion, Vimeo, etc. in droves, or even put up their own video sites using one of the open-source scripts that are out there. It's not at all hard to do if you have root access to a server or a halfway-decent VPS.
As for premium content... I dunno. How many different ways do we need to watch the same stuff? What could Google bring to the game that makes their service better what the existing players (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu Plus, etc.) are providing? Other than Google fanboys, who else really needs yet another streaming service providing the same content?
I'm not one of Google's biggest fans, so
perhaps surely I'm biased. But even speaking objectively, I can't really think of anything about Netflix or Amazon that I hate enough to be looking for a new provider.
In short, Google would have to prove that they do streaming better (how?) or cheaper (difficult, considering how inexpensive the established services are); or that they have a better library (also unlikely because content owners' concerns about streaming would apply to Google just as much as they do to any other service).
-Rich
