I have had problems recently, as well. I think it's that bandwidth is too expensive for YT to continue operate their business model, so they are cutting back.

Yeah, to expand on mrstickball point. I top have heard Youtube are removing some of the less profitable videos (One that have had less than ten views in four years kind of thing) because the band width they need is expensive and limited. Perhaps they have cut back recently.

Either way I hate Youtube.

Nope.. and I'm even using my iPhone to watch YT movies.. no problems.. maybe it's only in america..

There is probably something wrong with your PC browser.. did you watch streaming porn again without protection?

Ive been having the same problem. Youtube is such a nice service that we pay nothing for, so it may not be economically viable.

Well they've never actually made a profit.  Of course... neither did Amazon for like 6-7 years.

From what I understand, all of Youtube's money comes from advertising, and the advertising business is a weak money maker, especially in a bad economy.

The issue really comes down to thresholds and if YT ads are defaulting very often.

The problem with ads is that some companies won't show them very often, which means less money. For example, you can watch a whole 30 minute episode of a TV show on Hulu and see maybe 3-4 ads. Compare that to watching it on regular TV, and you may see 15-20 ads. That is where the problem lies. CPM is mostly similar between internet video ads and TV (sans the outliers like the Superbowl or major, major primetime affairs).

YT could do a lot of things to become profitable, it's just a matter of finding the right formula. I think that if they ran a 15 second pre-roll before every video over 30 seconds, and not default, they could do pretty well for themselves.

It's all about balancing bandwidth (which is very expensive for video) and the means to generate money for the servers.