• Google isn’t to blame for the DMCA, one of the most spectacularly abused pieces of digital legislation  ever created. But it does seem to be getting more aggressive about DMCA enforcement.
• Robert X. Cringely • Regarding Google’s year of screw-ups, most publicly with Buzz and Nexus One (Lack of phone support for a mobile phone? LOL!), but specifically in this case with the closure of a number of popular music blogs on its Blogger site, which Cringely notes has been underreported by the media. Which is why we’re doing our part by reporting it here. Many of the sites got no notification before they were straight-up taken off the Internet. “If at this point you’re drawing the conclusion that neither the IFPI nor Google know exactly what they’re doing in these matters, you’re not alone,” says I Rock Cleveland founder Bill Lipold, whose site was taken down based on a handful of broken links. source

• One of the two schools is tied to the Chinese military. The National Security Administration’s investigation into Google’s hacking claims has led to Shanghai Jiaotong University and the Lanxiang Vocational School. Jiaotong in particular has one of the country’s strongest computer science programs, while Lanxiang is directly tied to the Chinese military. What does this mean all mean? It means that it may have been rooted in China even if the government itself wasn’t involved. This could get interesting. source

• What Google was for search, YouTube is for video. Five years ago, the little-video-site-that-could registered its domain. And despite some early changes, it hit the popular consciousness fully-formed and just about perfect at what it did. And as huge fans of the site, we’d like to offer a little history on YouTube.

Early 2005: The (somewhat-disputed) roots

• The company storyline YouTube started after a group of friends (who were former PayPal employees) were at a dinner party and realized there wasn’t an easy way to share video. So they made it themselves. The rest is history.
• The other storyline YouTube came about as an attempt to make a video version of HotOrNot (yikes), but the model eventually (and fortunately) evolved into something a lot less like Chatroulette. The rest is history.
• Why two storylines? The masterminds behind the site reportedly realized a good origin story was the best way to push the idea to angel investors. Whether or not that’s true, it totally worked. The rest is history. source

May 2005: The first video

• The guy in this video, Jawed Karim, worked with founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen to start the service. While he didn’t have a huge role over time, he’s immortalized in the site’s first video. The lesson to learn from this? Bring more to the table than “Elephants have long trunks.”

Early 2006: Three reasons why Youtube got huge

• embeds YouTube made Flash embed codes a downright essential part of sharing video online. It was the spark that brought blogging to its logical next step.
• ease YouTube wasn’t first to the game. Vimeo had been around since 2004. But YouTube made it so easy, anyone could upload. Which helped it blow up quick.
• ethics At first, one could argue that YouTube’s ethics were light, which meant copyrighted stuff got on the site easily. But it also helped it build an audience overnight.

Mid-2006: The Google buyout

• $1.65 billion to hitch its wagon on the next big thing

• » At the time: It seemed questionable to many whether or not Google’s purchase was the right way to go. It was Google’s biggest purchase ever up to that point, and even if the site was heads and shoulders above Google Video, the fact it had no revenue model was risky.
• » Today: It’s pretty clear that Google was the right company to buy YouTube. Their support brought a lot of innovation, bandwidth, clout and opportunities to monetize. And it helped Google itself learn how to diversify its model. Even though it’s super-expensive to run due to the high bandwidth costs (and Google has yet to recoup its investment), it’s something of a crown jewel.

2006-2007: Three iconic early videos

• 
  “Charlie Bit Me” It has 160 million views, and counting. It’s the most-viewed video in the site’s history, and quite possibly the cutest thing we’ve ever seen. Besides this.
• “The Bus Uncle”This odd little bit of arguing in Cantonese was one of the earliest clips to gather a huge audience and draw massive media coverage in Hong Kong (of all places).
• “Guitar” Pachelbel’s Canon, as famous of a piece of music as it is, probably never got 69 million views before this South Korean kid got his grubby hands all over it.

2007: Growing pains

• $1 billion the size of the lawsuit Viacom hit the site with in April of that year; it’s still pending to this day (and we still miss Daily Show clips on YouTube)
• 10% the amount of traffic YouTube takes up over the ENTIRE Internet in 2007; it’s more than the Web’s entire bandwidth size in 2000

2008-2009: Growing gains

• 25% share of Google searches from YouTube source

• » Lots of videos: By October of 2009, YouTube was shoving through 1 billion views a day, a point which suggests the site’s gone beyond mere fad and is simply a part of everyday life.
• » Lots of bandwidth: YouTube’s bandwidth costs, depending on who you ask, are astronomical, but Wired notes that Google has so much clout (thanks to all the fiber optic cable they own) that bandwidth may in fact be a non-issue.

2008-2009: The mainstream takes notice

• 
  “Pork And Beans” Over time, the mainstream media got really good at manipulating the medium, and Weezer’s viral-encompassing clip was the best example. YouTube > MTV.
• “JK Wedding Dance” As great as this clip was (and it sure helped Chris Brown’s sagging career), the way it was used as a financial vehicle for the record companies was most interesting.
• 
  Boyle-mania The second-best-selling album of 2009 was sung by a middle-aged virgin with a heavenly voice. How? Simple. YouTube made Susan Boyle into a new kind of superstar.

2010: YouTube’s next step

• The Internet evolves at break-neck speed. We launch products quickly and constantly iterate to stay one step ahead of it. Our goal? To set the standard in online video delivery.
• YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley • In a message noting the company’s fifth anniversary. YouTube is big enough that it can set the standards for online video, and their next step will be by pushing HTML5 and high-definition video into the woodwork, along with growing the library of content to include more traditional types of video to complement its user-submitted offerings. A good start for a big player. source

• 13% of all Web traffic to major portals comes from Facebook
• 7% of trafficcomes from Google; eBay is better, even! source

• Google’s got a LOT of PR problems right now. Some of them are legitimate (see Google Buzz), others are simply a side effect of the company’s size. But the fact of the matter is, this hoax, plotted last week while we were complaining about the snow, is pretty dang funny. The car is fake. So is the rage. But the undercurrent is definitely real. source

• awful A blogger under the pseudonym Harriet Jacobs loudly complained in a post after the release of Google Buzz, due to the fact it allowed her abusive ex-husband to harass her.
• better After she wrote an epic blog post (now protected), Google dealt with her concerns (partially) and the media grabbed a hold of the story, too. She still plans to quit Gmail.

• This has been going on for more than four days now. I contacted my internet provider and they said it is out of their control.
• An anonymous Iranian whose internet is getting gummed up • Regarding his frustration with the Web. Iran has already shut down Gmail permanently – we blame Buzz – and has only been allowing limited access to the Web in the wake of the anniversary of the 1979 Iranian revolution. Google confirmed that they’ve had a sharp drop in traffic from Iran this week. “Whenever we encounter blocks in our services we try to resolve them as quickly as possibly because we strongly believe that people everywhere should have the ability to communicate freely online,” Google wrote. “Sadly, sometimes it is not within our control.” source

• 7 weeks without the Associated Press on Google; nobody noticed source

• terrible When Google launched its Nexus One, it forgot to offer something obvious it usually doesn’t offer for its products – live phone support. Users loudly complained.
• better Google just started offering it, over a month after they launched the freaking phone. About time. It only covers status and shipping issues, though. WTF, guys? source