jrockway, we know that google does things a certain way that blows up the costs of simple storage. It's not necessary to make 12 copies worldwide to get bare minimum redundancy required for this case. The data that needs to be replicated (video files) and account info is not realtime transactions. The video files can be transferred by fedexing a bunch or hard disks on a weekly basis (take a reasonable guess at Netflix catalog growth and compute the per week growth of data... it's indeed trivial).
I happen to have knowledge that google indeed does have such an explicit clause in it's employment contract. It sounds something like "... google deals with pretty much everything in computer software field. So if you invent/design/create anything at all computer related, while under employment with Google, we own it by default".
In this case they (seemingly) reacted to an actual legal takedown request from a (putative) copyright holder. Google's required to follow that process by law.
What's worse is their "content-id" program. In which, google goes out of it's way to try to programmatically identify and block content that it deems in violation of somebody's copyright. Needless to say, such a scheme leads to boneheaded outcomes like this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/09/05/michelle_...
"My passion for software often leads me to ignore work-life balance. I'm making a conscious effort to take time out to exercise and eat right so my all night hacking sessions are even more productive."
It almost sounds like the writer just discovered the concept of a queue. Just a plain old queue. It's as if a 100 years of queueing theory development just illuminated his world in a blinding flash of light and he was compelled to come up with brilliant new terms such as "spikability" to make sense of it all.
There's an easy way to weed out unlucky people. Just randomly throw out half the applicants. (You can substitute any proportion for "half" based on business needs)
You might say it's useless (in your blog post) but would it surprise you to know that there's a venture funded startup doing pretty much what your weekend project does (with extra bells and whistles perhaps).