[risotto]

I see your point, but who is uploading videos to Google then deleting the source? These services are for sharing and streaming, not archiving.

I don't work for Google but I do work on large scale data hosting. When you shut a service down you have multiple phases. Step 1, stop capturing new data. Google Video did this years ago and anyone truly invested in the service knew what was up back then. Step 2, pick a date to stop serving existing data. Step 3, wait for a very long time for more requests to get data back. It is crazy how and why these trickle in years after the fact. Step 4, delete data. I bet Google wont actually delete data for a very long time if ever.

Maybe step 2 is aggressive, but in my experience 90 days notice doesn't make a difference. Nobody does anything until the last few days if ever. You just have to draw a line in the sand.

It is very hard to shut a service down with any sort of usage, let alone Google scale usage. But very important to do from time to time. This is what I respect.