Uploads to the video sharing web site YouTube now exceed 24 hours a minute. That is nearly four years of video viewing added every day. If the current rate of growth continues it could reach 30 hours a minute by 2011, or 36 hours a minute sometime that year, approaching six years of video uploaded every day.
Hunter Walk, director of product management at YouTube announced the new milestone, nine months after YouTube passed the 20 hours a minute mark.
The rate of growth for video uploads to YouTube is almost linear. By informitv estimates, YouTube could reach 30 hours of video uploaded a minute by the end of 2010.
Over 12 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each month in the United States alone, double the number a year ago. YouTube delivers over a billion video views a day globally.
Since mid 2007, Google has increased from about 1% to over 5% of all internet traffic, much of that rise as a result of the growth of YouTube.
“If Google were an ISP, it would be the fastest growing and third largest global carrier,” according to Craig Labovitz of Arbor Networks, based on an analysis of data provided by over a hundred internet service providers.
Back in 2007, Google used third party transit providers, like Level 3, for the majority of their interconnect traffic. Since then, the company has been building out its own data centre and distribution capacity and pursued peering relationships directly with internet service providers.
Google has also deployed large numbers of cache servers with internet service providers around the world. Over 60% of Google traffic now flows directly between Google and consumer networks.