OK, so we've got Heroes season 2. Now we have the problem: do people want to pay money for it? Answer: well, no, not if they can get it free on Youtube. Piracy is Youtube's killer app. Unlike the iPod (piracy is the iPod's killer app, too, unless you think 20-somethings are filling 8 GB iPods at $1 a song), Youtube doesn't have plausible deniability or a convenient way to extract money from the pirates.
Google hired several engineers away from Nuance (one of the leaders in voice recognition), and they're working hard on growing their development there.
that is the point I'm trying to make. it is not possible today, I guess it will be possible in future.
how much can you tag? and who will do all the work of tagging? it has to be automated, like text search. video search is going to be much more difficult than text, and G has tons of videos to mine and refine algos.
it is just part of a bigger strategy - text search, book search, audio/video search etc.
youtube is a long term investment. as long as G has money to keep it running/improving, they have nothing to worry about.
may be 5-10 years from now, the same ppl would say that the best investment that google made, is youtube.