YouTube Cranks Up Upload Limit

Internet media giant YouTube is taking a not-too-surprising step into expanding its service by raising the file upload cap to a whopping 1GB.

The upload increase announcement comes via an official blog posted on September 28, revealed as one of the new features added to the service’s revamped video uploader. Although YouTube has become a household name due to its seemingly immeasurable amounts of user-supplied media uploaded each day - literally 13 hours of content uploaded per minute according to YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley (source) - the company faces stiff competition from the likes of Google Video and MSN. The upgrade not only allows higher resolutions and longer episodes, the move propels the company back into the forefront of streaming media content.

According to the blog, random account holders have already tested out the improved system, however YouTube has now opened the floodgates to all registered users. Although the new uploader features the ability to upload multiple files (10 maximum) and edit the video’s metadata during the upload process, the biggest surprise is YouTube’s decision to crank up the file cap from 100MB to 1GB and ten minutes in length.

"Our goal is to allow every person on the planet to participate by making the upload process as simple as placing a phone call," Hurley told TechCrunch. "This new video content will be available on any screen - in your living room, or on your device in your pocket. YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more."

Launched in 2005, YouTube has become a video sharing giant despite a lack of profit as of Q1 2008. Google bought YouTube back in November 2006 for a whopping 1.65 billion (in Google stock) and currently shells out around $1 million a day in bandwidth costs for YouTube alone. With those numbers, it would seem illogical to increase user storage of each file to 1GB. Only time will tell if the move cripples YouTube entirely, or propels it into the next generation of publicly shared videos.