zlacker

Vimeo was working the paid angle around the time that Youtube launched, and it wasn't under water. Youtube was successful because they _purposefully_ (and so, criminally) refused to take down copyrighted content because they were aiming to grow fast enough and large enough to be purchased by Google.

It's not just Youtube/Vimeo; for instance, Flickr was a premium paid service around the time that Facebook launched, and it wasn't under water, either.

These "freemium" services were able to act as _hideously unprofitable_ loss leaders for the large advertisement firms, and so take down the non-advertisement-funded competition.

It was predatorial monopolistic practices that gave us the current web.