[jojopotato]

As someone that lived through it, two things stuck with me

1. YouTube just worked, it relied on Flash and that was installed on almost every computer. IIRC google video required some other plugin and it didn’t work great.

2. There was a lot more content to watch, probably because they were less good at filtering copyrighted content.

[haylem]

My memories are that Google Video worked fine without additional plugins, but I primarily used it to consume Google content (primarily their tech talks), documentaries, etc... YouTube really was all about short home-made videos.

The UX on Youtube was generally better.

One thing I did like in Google Video though, was that it allowed to download copies of the videos easily to save local copies. That appealed to the data-hoarder in me, I suppose.