YouTube Instant

Yet another classic Stanford undergraduate story. Google releases Google Instant, and so Feross Aboukhadijeh creates YouTube instant.

Try it.

Very shortly afterward Feross received a tweet from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley offering him a job. That’s smart – other students have stuck it out and formed companies – like Google itself.

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To work like it is intended YouTube Instant requires a high speed connection and an essentially unlimited data plan. That’s because it downloads the best guess video as you type. It’s not going to help much to cache locally – YouTube instant lets the long tail of videos get exposed.

Can we imagine this being created in New Zealand? It’s got to be tough, especially when looking at YouTube at night. At the moment, when high speed, always on and unlimited broadband isn’t yet a reality, it’s difficult to see how NZ developers can break through to the world.