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> Cohen, who joined YouTube in 2016 after about 30 years in the record business, including stints as a road manager for Run-DMC and a senior executive at Warner

> Cohen, who joined YouTube in 2016 after about 30 years in the record business, including stints as a road manager for Run-DMC and a senior executive at Warner Music Group. I'm not sure he understands yet the culture of the organization he's in, and the way most internet companies work. The fact that Youtube is king of the hill does not mean he's sitting on a monopoly he can milk for revenue. On the Internet, if you crap on your users you become history in 6 months time.

glogla 9y ago
Not if you're the actual monopoly because of network effects. See youtube, facebook, google, microsoft.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Hi 5, Altavista, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, .... Wang, DEC, Olivetti, Commodore, Atari, Compaq, ....
- cornholio 9y ago
  Google search is a monopoly only in a regulatory/market leadership sense; they have what's called the incumbent's advantage, they were the first to provide a satisfactory solution and people don't have significant reason to switch to copy cats. Similar for Gmail. When we are moving to platforms like Android or Windows, yes, that's a strong technical monopoly entrenched by network effects, but it's no longer an internet product. Facebook is somewhat of a mixed bag, as they are recently finding out they have widely overestimated their "crap on the users" margin.
- onion2k 9y ago
  Not if you're the actual monopoly because of network effects. I'd have thought network effects are exactly why companies on the internet can't mess around with their users. If a few people start using another site and share it with their friends, the rest could all follow very quickly.
  - yoz-y 9y ago
    Youtube does have a big advantage of video being too large to move around quickly. It would take quite some time to bootstrap a new video service with even a remotely comparable catalog.
    - John_KZ 9y ago
      Not to mention 10 years worth of archived videos that will be lost (and are currently lost due to censoring and de-ranking). Youtube at this point is like the Library of Alexandria, but they just decided to burn down half the books and replace the index with a list of their favorite ones. You can read books for free, but they inject advertisements between paragraphs.
    - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
      > It would take quite some time to bootstrap a new video service with even a remotely comparable catalog. That's true, but it's a question of adoption - it has nothing to do with file size. Vimeo are a rival streaming service, and they're very good, but they don't offer YouTube-style monetization.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    No, network effects are the barrier preventing you from moving elsewhere. The stronger they are, the more of your friends have to simultaneously move elsewhere for you to move as well. In other words, the stronger the network effects are, the more a company can mess around with their users.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > If a few people start using another site But they don't, because they can't. YouTube recommendations are only ever internal links to other YouTube videos. Where would they go, anyway? Self-hosting and ads? They'd miss out on YouTube's monetization. Some YouTube personalities are quite vocal in how much they dislike YouTube, but they can't really leave. Perhaps if Vimeo looked into advertising monetisation there'd at least be a rival platform.

glogla 9y ago

Not if you're the actual monopoly because of network effects. See youtube, facebook, google, microsoft.

pjmlp 9y ago
Hi 5, Altavista, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, .... Wang, DEC, Olivetti, Commodore, Atari, Compaq, ....
cornholio 9y ago
Google search is a monopoly only in a regulatory/market leadership sense; they have what's called the incumbent's advantage, they were the first to provide a satisfactory solution and people don't have significant reason to switch to copy cats. Similar for Gmail. When we are moving to platforms like Android or Windows, yes, that's a strong technical monopoly entrenched by network effects, but it's no longer an internet product. Facebook is somewhat of a mixed bag, as they are recently finding out they have widely overestimated their "crap on the users" margin.
onion2k 9y ago
Not if you're the actual monopoly because of network effects. I'd have thought network effects are exactly why companies on the internet can't mess around with their users. If a few people start using another site and share it with their friends, the rest could all follow very quickly.
- yoz-y 9y ago
  Youtube does have a big advantage of video being too large to move around quickly. It would take quite some time to bootstrap a new video service with even a remotely comparable catalog.
  - John_KZ 9y ago
    Not to mention 10 years worth of archived videos that will be lost (and are currently lost due to censoring and de-ranking). Youtube at this point is like the Library of Alexandria, but they just decided to burn down half the books and replace the index with a list of their favorite ones. You can read books for free, but they inject advertisements between paragraphs.
  - MaxBarraclough 9y ago
    > It would take quite some time to bootstrap a new video service with even a remotely comparable catalog. That's true, but it's a question of adoption - it has nothing to do with file size. Vimeo are a rival streaming service, and they're very good, but they don't offer YouTube-style monetization.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  No, network effects are the barrier preventing you from moving elsewhere. The stronger they are, the more of your friends have to simultaneously move elsewhere for you to move as well. In other words, the stronger the network effects are, the more a company can mess around with their users.
- MaxBarraclough 9y ago
  > If a few people start using another site But they don't, because they can't. YouTube recommendations are only ever internal links to other YouTube videos. Where would they go, anyway? Self-hosting and ads? They'd miss out on YouTube's monetization. Some YouTube personalities are quite vocal in how much they dislike YouTube, but they can't really leave. Perhaps if Vimeo looked into advertising monetisation there'd at least be a rival platform.