New YouTube Website - Good Progress, But Late

YouTube is an amazing web service.  From Google's purchase of YouTube I was convinced they would do very well with their investment (even with the majority opinion being that they paid way too much).  I think most know appreciate how valuable YouTube is (as a service and a profit center for Google).

I have been amazed how poorly done the YouTube web site has been.  They have put in place a new site design today.  It seems like a big improvement.  Still, most of it seems like stuff that could have been done 3 years ago.  I don't understand why they have been so slow to improve the website.

The home page is much better for seeing what new content has been added on those channels I am subscribed to.

It will take me some time to see if they have done better at showing me content I might enjoy.  I can't believe how bad the existing site had been at doing this - showing me content I might like.

The definitely should let me remove useless buttons like Facebook (connect).  I guess the popularity of Facebook makes defaulting to including the button ok, but don't make everyone that has no intention of using Facebook (or linking YouTube and Facebook accounts) have that button in prime navigation location.

I should be able to decline a suggested channel (and get new suggestions).

I can't see that browse has been improved much (it seems a bit of a UI improvement at the top).  Which is very lame.  This should be extremely valuable - instead it is lame.

Netflix is so cheap now ($3.5 billion market cap), maybe Google should be buy it and use their preference matching and content suggestion technology.  At the very least hire a great team of engineers (money should essentially not be an issue - they could have all the money they would need - doing this well should bring hundreds of millions to Google) and have them create a much much much better job of suggesting YouTube content for users.

Related: 6 years Later Goolge Acts To Let Me Block Sites I don't want to see - How Google Should Improve (2006) - Web Search Improvements (2005) - YouTube Uses Multivariate Experiment To Improve Sign-ups 15% - Google Stock Price Rises 5.7% Today (to $255), Why? (2005)