I've always admired Google. Stripped from all the hip eyecandy, they have always offered pure functionality at a very high level. The quality of Google applications are such that they almost shame similar applications and force them to shape up.
Google changed the way people searched. Google Calendar is a fantastic app with functionality and an ease-of-use that a lot of desktop applications miss. GMail is incredibly useful and Google Docs offer a perfect solution for editing documents online.
And then, there's YouTube. This weekend, spent a few hours learning some extra ropes in Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and did a special title for a live video of my band. It's an explosion that flashes across the bottom of the screen and then the titles come up from behind the explosion. The video actually has a lot of blue in it because of the lighting on stage. Youtube, using the old Sorenson Spark coded that was used in Flash 7, made my video look like it was composed of lego bricks, rather than single pixels and the title I spent the last few hours on was completely illegible. I experimented with a multitude of quality and codes settings but still ran into the Sorenson Spark conversion. I switched to Vimeo but still wasn't pleased with the quality and especially not with the 500 MB upload limit - especially since I have a pile of HD footage lying around that I'm determined to use someday.
Blip.tv came to me while looking for something completely different. I never really paid much attention to blip.tv since the site says "BETA" and I wouldn't want to waste my time on something that may be history later today. I uploaded my latest effort and lo and behold Blip.tv did an excellent job on the video. In addition, Blip.tv has an excellent player. Blip.tv has my vote!
Still, it's a pity that YouTube, despite being Google, lacks proper encoding and has no HD support.