At five years old, YouTube serves two billion videos daily and is a dominant player in the global media industry. Taking a step back, it's interesting to consider how YouTube got here and what the relationship between Google and YouTube has produced.

For one thing, they're a great example of being in the right place at the right time, and embracing the culture of the web before worrying about the details. The secret to YouTube is that from day one they made it easy to post, easy to share, and easy to interact. In less than a year they were getting 100 million video views a day and in less than two years they were bought by Google for 1.65 billion US. A lot of that initial growth was driven by people uploading videos they didn't have permission or copyright for, like TV shows, movies, all sorts of video clips. The early days of YouTube were all about finding any kind of video imaginable.

If Google had not stepped in to buy YouTube and save it from legal and technical ruin, it's not clear whether the company could have survived its own momentum and popularity. After Google and the lawsuits and the takedowns began, users started to shift the way they used YouTube. YouTube started as and continues to be a wonderful kind of minor league for talent development of all sorts. Lots of people start their careers on YouTube or are in the slow but steady process of building an audience. On the one hand you have someone like Justin Bieber who used YouTube to propel himself to global cult leader, and on the other you've got thousands and thousands of micro-celebrities using YouTube to gain influence in their own communities, industries, and in some cases gaining audiences just as big as traditional TV. (This is observable even in mainstream media: David Simon's new HBO show Treme plays off of this.)

YouTube is also an incubator for all sorts of ideas and cultural trends - people use it to share concepts, ideas, arguments, products, and services. We now think of the viral video as a staple of pop culture, and of course YouTube is the medium of record. Really what makes YouTube distinct from most other video platforms in that it has the potential to deliver an audience, potentially larger and certainly more diverse than traditional TV. Think of it as a kind of "first past the post" system, keeping in mind that people turn to YouTube cause YouTube is where people turn. It has achieved a critical mass effect for video online.

From a technical standpoint, YouTube's primary contribution to the web in general has been ease of use when it comes to sharing video. The company founders came up with YouTube as an answer to the difficulties they faced when uploading video to the web. The subtext of their success is the rise of cloud computing (web centric computing), in which everything is shared on the web, rather than downloaded or emailed as files. By getting people to use and watch video "in the cloud", YouTube was able to create a new kind of TV network in the ether.

Another significant technological accomplishment was the development of video fingerprint technology: this allowed them to clean up the site and remove any content that was in violation of copyright laws or their usage policy. This was a big piece of the puzzle that Google was able to offer.

The other primary role of this video fingerprint technology was to enable their advertising system to target ads to particular types of videos, making it easier to allow users to share their favourite song, and then embed it with ads whose revenue goes in part to the original copyright owner. YouTube's advertising system is fairly sophisticated and allows multiple parties to share in the proceeds generated by videos uploaded to the site.

Initially, part of Google's motivation for purchasing YouTube was related to the larger lawsuit the company faced for their initial hosting of tons of copyrighted material. This suit is still before the courts, and Google has a lot at stake in terms of the liability of content distributed online. They've made YouTube worth their while because they had the infrastructure to handle its traffic - Google has an insane number of servers that can host and distribute YouTube's videos. They've been able to leverage their own resources to reduce operating costs. Finally, the credibility Google provides has enabled YouTube to be a major player in the media business. This combined with their other operations (search engine, advertising, mobile) makes Google arguably the most powerful media company in the world.

YouTube is beginning to emerge as a viable content distribution model for TV, whether you are a producer or a consumer, a professional or an amateur. Google is working with hardware manufacturers to ensure that their software and their content is available on all sorts of platforms and devices. YouTube is now available in HD and 3D and so it's just a matter of time before people start considering YouTube as an alternative to their cable or satellite provider. Similarly YouTube's revenue sharing programs are advancing and maturing so that young talent will increasingly have avenues and models to develop content independent of traditional industry hierarchies, reaching their audiences directly. This may allow for the emergence of new narratives and story telling concepts that enrich and entertain society in ways not previously possible.

The challenge that YouTube and Google will face is backlash from the powerful forces and industries who will be displaced by all this. Never underestimate the power of the telcos and the cable cos, as the latter also own much of the media, and both groups are determined to defend their business model. Either they will adapt or there will be a huge battle with Google/YouTube in the coming days.