Boy, this one sure is a toughie all right! Google and YouTube, both, heavyweights in the online entertainment arena, regularly attract an avalanche of daily traffic. Both sites have hundreds of thousands of members each, and are still expanding! Both sites serve up pretty much the same stuff, apart from a few subtleties here and there. So really, just who’s the winner?

Neither! It’s going to be extremely difficult to say ‘Look, Google is the best,’ or ‘YouTube gets my nod’, simply because each site is great in its own unique, inimitable style!

However, a popular question being floated around in online forums these days is, ‘What makes people so attracted to Youtube, anyway?’ Well, I would say, it’s mostly because YouTube offers better membership benefits than Google does. Indeed, here are some of the cool bonuses YouTube members have the privilege of enjoying:

• Find, join and create video groups to connect with people with similar interests.
• Customize your experience with play lists and subscriptions.
• Integrate YouTube with your website using video embeds or API s.
• You can have people subscribe to watch your videos.
• You have the chance to get your video/s listed in the ‘Top Rated’, ‘Most Discussed’, ‘Top Favorites,’ and ‘Most Linked’ categories that get tons of traffic, which in turn means you become famous

Now let’s move on to the other stuff, like comparing and contrasting video.google.com and YouTube’s user interface and type of content uploaded.

User Interface: - YouTube.com

The Pros: - Simple, user-friendly and uncluttered, since it only has ‘Featured Videos’ on its Home Page.

The Cons: - YouTube’s interface is a tad dull and boring.

User Interface: - Video.Google.com

Pros: - Has a brighter, cleaner interface, compared to YouTube’s.

Cons: - Too many categories listed on the Home Page can be kinda distracting, when your goal is to search for something not related to those categories.

Type of content uploaded: - YouTube.com

They have videos under wide and different categories, such as ‘Arts and Animation’, ‘Autos and Vehicles’, ‘Comedy and Entertainment’, ‘Pets and Animals’….. well, the list goes on!

Type of content uploaded: - Video.Google.com

It has a far wider and more impressive range of categories that you can upload videos to.

So who wins? I guess there’s room for everybody.

About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.