My thoughts:

There was word that although YouTube has dominated the online video sharing market, its founders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen aren’t making serious money out of it and are actually living on credit. YouTube’s only future is to be bought out by something bigger, in this case Google, who beat out Yahoo! at the very last moments of the deal.

Google’s been aggressive in pursuing video as part of their advertising business that makes up most of their revenue. But what’s odd is that with their recent $1 billion agreement with MySpace who has their own video sharing space, it’s interesting to see if Google will be allowed to display video ads alongside MySpace’s. Looks like a conflict of interest in the horizon. The numbers tell it all. About 70% of Youtube’s traffic comes from MySpace. If Google decides to insert advertising in all of YouTube’s videos shown on MySpace, they get instant free advertising, right? MySpace appeared to be surprised by the whole buyout event, so it’s safe to say they’re already pondering the same thing.

So far, YouTube captures about 34 million users a month, while MySpace’s own tube gets 17 million but they’re catching up very fast. If and when MySpace decides to get rid of all YouTube videos from their site, that will spell trouble for Google. And honestly, online video buffs will be put off when they begin to see advertising in YouTube videos. Hey, that’s the one major reason they watch stuff on the Internet. No ads!

On the bright side, Chad and Steve are now about $200-$300 million richer. I can practically see them swimming in a sea of liquefied gold in this video they made post-Google:

Good for you, dudes!

The winner? Google. Although Myspace’s dreams of making good money had just come true, its long-term prospects are still put into question. Remember. It’s Google using MySpace to make money, NOT the other way around. The numbers tell the story. Ratings have it that MySpace’s traffic grows an astounding 300% annually, easily overtaking Google. So if you think I’m insinuating that Google’s merely using MySpace and stopping it from making its own search engine, you’re right.

Certain terms of the deal stipulate that the $900 million sum be paid in three years as long as MySpace does its part in keeping traffic up and enticing new users, among others.

In an act of utter desperation, I took up LiveJournal user faithlessphil’s advice on switching my DNS to somehow improve my online plight. According to him, PLDT had run out of IP addresses that they are now taking them from as far as Johannesburg. Ok, that might be a stretch. But who cares? PLDT MyDSL is crap. He recommends using OpenDNS’s faster and more secure DNS servers. I’m on a Linksys wireless network. Setting it up took under a minute and there’s no registration required!

The results?

I have noticed a bit of an improvement in accessing US-based sites such as Friendster and MySpace and my sites got a bump up in response and loading times as well. As for downloading, speed improved about 15-20%. Maybe it’s psychological, but i’ll take all the help that I can get. I’ll see how OpenDNS lives up to its promise in the coming days. But from all the buzz it’s been getting, looks like it’s the Real Mccoy.