YouTube to Pay Off the Investment. Or Not?

Although I believe you know the story, I'll tell it one more time. Google acquired YouTube, the online video sharing service in October 2006 for $1.65 billion, one of the biggest investments ever made for an Internet company according to analysts. Everybody expected to see YouTube growing up conquering the Internet but, despite all the expectations, the video service is more and more the bad guy in numerous cases reported in the entire world. Since the impressive acquisition, YouTube caused a lot of headaches and I'll present you only a few of them.

Daniela Cicarelli, Ronaldo's ex-wife, sued Google for publishing videos without authorization. A Brazilian court closed YouTube Brazil and ordered the company to remove all the videos displaying the Brazilian model.

Although there were numerous other cases, Viacom was the next major company that sued Google for the content published on its web service. This story is much more interesting because the owner of MTV and Comedy Central demanded the company to remove almost 100.000 clips from the page and, after almost two weeks, decided to sue the search giant. Although it might look quite unfair, Viacom sustained the video service uploaded videos and earned money without approval.

After this huge Viacom case, YouTube was banned in Turkey and Thailand because its users uploaded improper movies. Although YouTube is now accessible from every corner of the world as there were no new cases reported, it's obvious the video product caused a lot of headaches for the parent company Google.

To avoid your accusations that I presented only the bad parts of YouTube, I must admit the video service also represented a good cause, helping a policeman to arrest the suspects of a crime, a woman fighting against cancer and many other interesting cases.

So, as a conclusion, I ask you: what do you think? Will Google manage to pay off the investments as more and more companies are fighting to dethrone the online video sharing service?