You could argue that youtube's rate of innovation is low. But when it was launched it was Flash-based sub-10-minute low-resolution prerecorded videos that paid creators nothing, and so on.
Now it supports long videos, 4k, streaming, html5¹, pays content creators enough there are a bunch of them doing it full time², has an ad-free premium option, it isn't at war with music labels, and it hasn't been bankrupted by bandwidth costs.
Seems a fairly good track record to me.
¹ Arguably Youtube was one of the big forces getting decently working video out of flash and into browsers. Along with Apple refusing to ship Flash on iOS, that is!
² Admittedly at the whim of fickle algorithms, so not the best financial security there
Now it supports long videos, 4k, streaming, html5¹, pays content creators enough there are a bunch of them doing it full time², has an ad-free premium option, it isn't at war with music labels, and it hasn't been bankrupted by bandwidth costs.
Seems a fairly good track record to me.
¹ Arguably Youtube was one of the big forces getting decently working video out of flash and into browsers. Along with Apple refusing to ship Flash on iOS, that is!
² Admittedly at the whim of fickle algorithms, so not the best financial security there