As of the end of November, internet rating form comScore concluded that Google, Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube online video sharing service led all the U.S. online video competition, holding a 27.6% market share in September. It's no surprise -- if I were to ask 10 people where they could go to watch video on the web, my hunch is that at least 9 would say YouTube.

Was YouTube worth the billion-plus that Google paid for it? First-mover advantage is everything, and if Google can find a workable strategy to monetize the site, then most likely the $1.65 billion price tag won't look like very much. comScore also stated that Google-owned sites ranked as the top U.S. video property. In September, there were 2.6 billion videos viewed. 2.5 billion of those were via YouTube. I suspect the other 0.1 billion came courtesy of Google Video.

Coming in behind Google in September was News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, and Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), which saw 387 million and 381 million videos viewed, respectively. Is online video beginning to compete more and more with broadcast television? It's not too hard to let the cat out of the bag with that statement, since over 9 billion videos were viewed online in September. An estimated 75% of American internet users participated in all that viewing. Yes, I would say that is competition.

Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) has announced a new online video sharing and storage service. The new service, aptly -- and boringly -- named "Best Buy Video Sharing," is being launched in partnership with online hosting company Mydeo (which I suppose is a play on "My Video").

This new service must be geared toward customers who would utilize Best Buy for Business, the retailer's division that markets itself towards small- and medium-sized businesses. I say this because the cost of this new video sharing service -- $6.97 for 100 minutes of video hosting to start -- can't really compete with consumer-level services like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG)'s YouTube and Google Video, which are free.

But then again, many businesses have training needs and other unique needs that would require secure video hosting with long lengths (an hour or more), and this service would appear to be perfect for those needs. However, if Best Buy is trying to crack into the video content consumer distribution business, I fail to see what the point is. Will consumers readily pay for something when the competition gives it away for free? Is history holds, then most likely they will not.

Best Buy should market this new service to the business customer and de-emphasize it to the standard consumer. Whether it does this is anyone's guess.

RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) has released a news multimedia player that could give the likes of Viacom (NYSE: VIA), CBS (NYSE: CBS) and other large media companies fits.

Real has been producing software players for PCs and cell phones for over a decade. But, the new player will allow consumers to take video from all major formats including Flash, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) Quicktime, and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Media and store them on the PC hard-drive. The player will also allow users to rip video from sites like YouTube, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Acccording to TechCrunch: "Every content creator will now be challenged by the real possibility that if their product is DRM free, it's likely to be ripped from the original source site and even burned to CD." And Barron's writes: "Once you capture the video, the software provides an easy way to send links to the content to other people."

So video pirates and video sharing buffs have YouTube in a bottle. Video can be captured on a PC hard-drive and sent to as many other computers as the user would like. Hard to trace. It is not as if a copy of Saturday Night Live is on the front page of YouTube. Instead, its is being hidden and sent out from a PC hidden somewhere among the other tens of millions of PCs around the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

An hour or so ago, General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) unit NBC and News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) made flashing top-billed headlines throughout the world of journalism. "NBC, News Corp plan video site in challenge to Google's YouTube!" says the Wall Street Journal. "NBC and News Corp. to Create YouTube Rival," says the New York Times.

But on further investigation it's not clear how directly the two sites (NBC's is as-yet-unnamed) will compete. The NBC/News Corp partnership has an entirely different strategy than the user-generated flavor of YouTube. The announcement mentions that episodes of popular TV shows like 24, Heroes, and The Simpsons, as well as recently-released movies like Little Miss Sunshine will be distributed through the special NBC/News Corp online video player. What's more, internet portals (the real Google rivals) like Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s MSN and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX)'s AOL will be distributing this content and, if statements from the big three are any indication, creating their own to redistribute through the cozy network.

While I'm sure there is every intention of accepting (and, one would imagine, encouraging) user-created content, it seems to me that this is so far beside the point. This video portal is about controlling the distribution of (and gaining revenue from the ads placed against) the old media companies' proprietary content. It's if-you-can't-beat-em-join-em. It's smart! It's a well-orchestrated strategy. But it's not NBC vs. YouTube.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who founded YouTube, filed plans yesterday to sell 3.2 million shares of Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) , which acquired the video-sharing service in November. You didn't have to be much of a psychic to see this one coming.

The jury is still out on whether Google overpaid for a company that hasn't made a nickel in profit or made the savviest acquisition in the history business. So far, YouTube seems to be worth the considerable headaches it's causing the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.

Fights over copyrighted material will be worked out. Competitors will emerge, but like with Google they will have a tough time. Once someone's media habits are established, they are really hard to change. A competitive video-sharing site will need to be orders of magnitude better than YouTube if it stands a chance.

But thanks to YouTube, every entrepreneur in Silicon Valley thinks their money-losing venture is worth 10 times more than it was before the Google acquisition was announced. The media hasn't helped much either. A much-derided story in BusinessWeek called "Valley Boys" made the case that every company connected to that awful buzzword Web 2.0., such as the article-rating site Digg, was worth big money.

"So far, Digg is breaking even on an estimated $3 million annually in revenues," the story said. "Nonetheless, people in the know say Digg is easily worth $200 million."

That math may sound dubious and sourcing a bit murky , but that same article said that YouTube "could easily fetch $500 million." That prediction made in August was way off. Three months later, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

It was a big year for Web2.0, especially with Google's $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube.

But what about 2007? What can we expect?

I had a chance to interview a variety of top players in the space:

Suranga Chandratillake, founder and CTO of blinx:

In 2006, video sharing was the biggest trend with lots of companies -- especially the smaller sites -- growing really fast, which highlights the demand for online video. We also saw a great jump in user-generated content. But, traditional media and entertainment companies are catching up and seeing the Internet as a great distribution channel. In 2007, we expect to see even more content on the Web -- especially high-quality content -- and a greater need for better video search engines that can help Internet users navigate through the clutter. Also, with the Internet making content creation and distribution cheap, we expect to see a lot of experimentation with the length of videos and advertisements.