What makes youtube a revolution is its technology. Every stinking TV station has a web site with video cuts but they rarely can serve them, and usually do it with a dopey crashable video player. Windows Media 10 anybody?
Youtube runs on any reasonably modern browser that can handle Flash video flv and if you're clever you can save them. Youtube delivers hundreds of millions of videos a day. They're going to be a case study in internet distribution, if only as a postmortem. You really have to appreciate what an advance this is.
As far as making money, they've yet to take in a penny. No billing model, no idea what their investors are thinking.
I can go with you on that line of thinking -- that's it's a huge advance in terms of technology. And, frankly, that's something I've come to look for in a candidate: who's into technology? That's an important question to me as a voter.
As for the billing and making money part -- I'm guessing someday they will charge a fee to post a video on youtube. Or charge a fee for something else. And, that's probably coming soon, I would imagine.