Does YouTube use proprietary software to make their videos download and play at a reasonable speed? Why is every other video hosting service, including Vimeo, so freaking slow?? Seems like Vimeo, which charges for use, ought be putting some of that money into making their videos fast enough to be watchable.

Always been that way for me. Vimeo for quality but YouTube for speed in loading. I used to think it was my internet provider but I have a really fast connection now.

Could be various factors, based on my limited coding knowledge tho YT might implement a preBuffer(); type function where linked URLs of thumbnails on a results page begin to load in the background, so that when you get to the video page it's already begun loading. Otherwise maybe their servers have a better adaptive bitrate formula to start off a slower bitrate until it determines the proper bitrate. Otherwise maybe just better/faster & more servers altogether, with mirrored ones throughout the country.

Google has enough money to send cars out to photograph streetmaps of almost every block in all larger cities throughout the nation. So yeah, they have more money to invest than Vimeo:)