Why we should care if YouTube fails and where I see YouTube heading

Last week Viacom announced that they are suing Google's YouTube for $1 billion dollars. Today we learn that Fox/NBC are looking at creating a media site (tv and movies) and some potential content from users. Good discussion across the 'sphere including Mashable, Valleywag and TechCrunch.

Mike notes, "This won’t be a direct YouTube competitor in that the focus will be on distribution of content to third party sites: deals may already be in place with Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and News Corp.’s MySpace. There may or may not be a dedicated website for this content as well."

Valleywag says, "Google's online video site could soon look — but for amateur videos, cat pratfalls and marketing stunts — rather barren."

So why should we care if YouTube starts to fall apart? A few reasons… first is the investor community. If the investors in Google start to believe that the 1.5 billion was a wasted purchase, this will most likely affect the stock. And honestly, I believe as Google goes, we all go. Investors only care about return (nothing else) and if less videos = less revenue opportunities, then less revenue will follow.

This is important because if investors start to believe the Internet cannot hold the revenue expectations, then some may start to back away from it as an investment choice. And this is part of what lead to the burst at the beginning of this century.

Where will YouTube end up? Easy. They will be a user-generated content site. Is that so bad? No. Is it worth 1.5 b? No.

I still believe Google should have kept YouTube and mass media separate. They could have leveraged their Video platform for the "big boys" and kept YouTube as it was.

So here is the question… will Google (who owns the Internet) be able to beat Fox/NBC (who own the airwaves) for the crown of online video. I still want to be able to pick what I want to watch from anywhere in the world. I want worldwide ala carte service streamed to me.