No Doubts, that YouTube is one of the leaders on the video sharing and streaming market. According to comScore, Google's sites, primarily YouTube, are the leaders in video content properties by the number of viewers. What does it mean for Google as a business? It means that Google has lots of data that could be converted into revenue stream mostly with advertising. A huge amount of data is really good and in current market conjuncture is the most important fact. But in my opinion this market is changing and such changes are coming very quickly. Here is several reasons why I think this market is moving forward? 1. Information consumption preferences I think that information consumption preferences are moving forward, people' behavior in the Internet has changed a lot for the last decade. How does it look like? First of all, people want to get the best quality in everything. Especially in the Internet and especially in video content. I think that this is one of the reasons why people pay the subscription fee in such platforms as Amazon Prime and Netflix. YouTube missed this opportunity to become the leader among the broadcasting players, however it's trying to take the last chance of being in this market. In October they announced their YouTube Red launch and I am pretty sure that they don't have any chances to get their potential customers back from Netflix or Amazon Prime. At the moment Google is trying to convert current YouTube's audience into the paid customers and will most likely succeed in it because of their Chromecast hardware. This hardware plugs into the HDMI port on a TV and allows users to easily connect their video streaming from laptop to TV. The problem here is in 360-degree video and high-quality. YouTube's executives have announced several times that they are working on HD quality, expanded their partnership with GoPro recently, but we, users, don't see anything right now. 2. Data is more important I have no doubt that you can find almost all content for free around the web. Instead of trying to prevent it and protect the author's rights, I think the best way is to make such things as video and music streaming for free. Yes, such services as Netflix will die instantly, but the current market shows that you can earn lots of money on data. This is the same thing as getting something for free (or almost for free) using the loyalty programs. Data is becoming more important than anything else today. Just imagine, how much money could Amazon make using their data from Amazon Prime. And I am pretty sure that they are doing it right now. Analyzing the big amount of data - this is the most important problem. As an example - you can get an access to the premier of Warcraft or new series of your favorite TV show if you spend $150 on Amazon.com. Sounds great, isn't it? YouTube will most likely lose this battle against other competitors as Amazon if they wouldn't partner with huge internet retail company. This is another stage of market evolution started from free bad quality (problems with access to this information as well), then good high-priced quality, then subscription model and then the best quality for the data about you. 3. The way of monetization The way of monetization is related to the previous point. I think that the video advertising is the laid back industry at the moment. As soon as we know such marketing model (or whatever you call it) as Native Advertising and we see it spreading all over the internet right now, just a few companies provides the software to create the native video advertising campaigns. You'd better check the following companies: Ingrain.io and Mirriad. These companies are moving the whole industry forward, their software analyzes the video streaming and inputs the advertising into the video. When you are watching the video It looks like the banner on the wall is native or the cup on the table is real. YouTube still can catch this opportunity and get an extra revenue from its content right now, but the company should do it really fast. The overall native advertising market is going up and native video advertising will most likely increase its growth rate. 4. More advanced technologies This point is mostly related to the preferences of users. As far as people become smarter, they would like to use advanced instruments to make their video look better. Do you remember the first point? People would like to consume high-qualified music and video with high definition video. There are several companies that provide more advanced technologies such as Brightcove, Vusion, Twistage and some others. The competition on this market is really fierce, and I think that this is the right environment for developing the most advanced and user-friendly platforms. YouTube is super user-friendly, but the technology of publishing the video is really poor. Or to be honest, there is no technology. Brightcove, for example, allows you to edit the video, the light, shadows, colors etc. Summary As a short summary, I can tell that it's too early to tell that YouTube is going to be another MySpace, but if it continues trying to catch the train instead of taking the next one, it will most likely disappear as MySpace.