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Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and d

Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). If you are taking a consumer benefit angle I don't see how you conclude that Google should have been prevented from buying YouTube.

tivert 8y ago
> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). Even if that's true (which I doubt), Google is not the only company that owns fiber. > If you are taking a consumer benefit angle I don't see how you conclude that Google should have been prevented from buying YouTube. The GP was talking about a "shift away" from the "'consumer welfare' view of anti-trust," because that view permits acquisitions like that of YouTube by Google.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > Even if that's true (which I doubt), Google is not the only company that owns fiber. Would you rather have Verizon owning YouTube? Every single telco has tried to launch their own YT. They launched, and every single one of them failed. The reason they keep failing is that they are telcos, their core capabilities do not play well with an open, network agnostic, consumer-driven video service. They'll prioritize their own content and their own network (look at Verizon and "Oath"). If you "deleted" YouTube, and both Amazon, Google, Verizon, AT&T launched video services, which ones do you think would succeed? Definitely Google's, maybe Amazon's, definitely not Verizon's or AT&T's. Google happens to be a "third-party content access monetizing" company that owns infrastructure, not an infrastructure company trying to be a "third-party content access monetizing" company.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  Any legal theory under which it would have been better for Level3 to buy YouTube than it has been for Google to buy it is, IMHO, worth no further consideration.
- nopriorarrests 8y ago
  >> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. >Even if that's true (which I doubt) Literally one hour ago Alphabet CFO went thru some advanced mental gymnastics to avoid straight answers about youtube profitability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19080868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19080868 - No youtube breakout of revenues, Again not a bullish sign for that division, stil nothing on youtube on the call. - EDIT on the earnings call they did talk briefly about Youtube, no real new numbers though, just their assurance that youtube is crushing it - Porat is doing gymnastics to talk about youtube but not actually say anything about youtube. Are youtbue numbers really that bad???? So, it seems that OP is mostly correct in his assumption. Normally CFO of public companies are not shy talking about their successful bets.
mtgx 8y ago
Someone one else would've bought YouTube. Or Vimeo would have become the #1 video site, and then maybe Microsoft or Amazon would have bought it. Still better than Google alone owning most of the biggest traffic sites.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > Someone one else would've bought YouTube Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco. Are you sure you'd want a telco owning YouTube? Can you imagine how awful it would be? Vimeo is owned by IAC, who then owned AskJeeves, TripAdvisor, HotWire, LendingTree and today owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, The Daily Beast, etc. You sure you'd want the top video website owned by IAC?
  - treis 8y ago
    >Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco What about Amazon or Microsoft?
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      They don't own. They's recently (in the past 5 years) started taking part in building, but they don't own anything compared to Google and the major telcos.
    - shereadsthenews 8y ago
      They both have a lot of datacenters and private fiber between them but neither has anything like the ISP peering network that Google owns. Not even close.
  - blub 8y ago
    Any of the above options would be better than the current reality, where Google is basically controlling video on the internet. They're long past their days of innocence.
puzzle 8y ago
That sounds plausible at first, but is inaccurate on multiple levels. By early 2006, YouTube had substantial peering in place. It's easy to prove: they talked about their programs at NANOG (https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog37/presentations/bill.norton.3.pdf https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog37/presentations/bill.no...). Without those, they would have folded already. They were acquired by Google only at the end of the year. Google doesn't own all of its fiber. Also, some ISPs have made public claims of being paid by Google for transit traffic. Google, but also ISPs, saves a lot of money through peering or the Google Global Cache. This is also why YT had peering in 2006: remember that traffic moves across multiple ISPs and it wasn't just YT's costs that were going to go up with their exponential growth. Last but not least, consider that Netflix doesn't own fiber – or at least haven't announced any – and they haven't been sunk by network costs, thanks to peering and edge caching. [I used to work at Google and knew at the time quite a bit about YT's infrastructure. The above is all public information.]
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  YouTube had some peering but not enough. It was a massive cash incinerator.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    > It was a massive cash incinerator. I mean, this is not unheard of in Silicon Valley. Be it YouTube or some other company, truth is online user-generated video was bound to be huge given the growth in bandwidth capacity and improvement in smartphone cameras. The fact that specifically YouTube is what it is right now might be because it operates under the Google umbrella. Had the acquisition not happened, I'm sure we'd have at least a couple online video unicorns feeding off the huge demand for video and supply of people wanting to share.
erentz 8y ago
> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). By this logic Netflix shouldn’t exist because it doesn’t use Google’s network assets. I’m pretty sure YouTube’s advertising revenue should cover its cost of building out CDN and transport infrastructure.

tivert 8y ago

> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). Even if that's true (which I doubt), Google is not the only company that owns fiber. > If you are taking a consumer benefit angle I don't see how you conclude that Google should have been prevented from buying YouTube. The GP was talking about a "shift away" from the "'consumer welfare' view of anti-trust," because that view permits acquisitions like that of YouTube by Google.

ucaetano 8y ago
> Even if that's true (which I doubt), Google is not the only company that owns fiber. Would you rather have Verizon owning YouTube? Every single telco has tried to launch their own YT. They launched, and every single one of them failed. The reason they keep failing is that they are telcos, their core capabilities do not play well with an open, network agnostic, consumer-driven video service. They'll prioritize their own content and their own network (look at Verizon and "Oath"). If you "deleted" YouTube, and both Amazon, Google, Verizon, AT&T launched video services, which ones do you think would succeed? Definitely Google's, maybe Amazon's, definitely not Verizon's or AT&T's. Google happens to be a "third-party content access monetizing" company that owns infrastructure, not an infrastructure company trying to be a "third-party content access monetizing" company.
shereadsthenews 8y ago
Any legal theory under which it would have been better for Level3 to buy YouTube than it has been for Google to buy it is, IMHO, worth no further consideration.
nopriorarrests 8y ago
>> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. >Even if that's true (which I doubt) Literally one hour ago Alphabet CFO went thru some advanced mental gymnastics to avoid straight answers about youtube profitability: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19080868 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19080868 - No youtube breakout of revenues, Again not a bullish sign for that division, stil nothing on youtube on the call. - EDIT on the earnings call they did talk briefly about Youtube, no real new numbers though, just their assurance that youtube is crushing it - Porat is doing gymnastics to talk about youtube but not actually say anything about youtube. Are youtbue numbers really that bad???? So, it seems that OP is mostly correct in his assumption. Normally CFO of public companies are not shy talking about their successful bets.

mtgx 8y ago

Someone one else would've bought YouTube. Or Vimeo would have become the #1 video site, and then maybe Microsoft or Amazon would have bought it. Still better than Google alone owning most of the biggest traffic sites.

ucaetano 8y ago
> Someone one else would've bought YouTube Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco. Are you sure you'd want a telco owning YouTube? Can you imagine how awful it would be? Vimeo is owned by IAC, who then owned AskJeeves, TripAdvisor, HotWire, LendingTree and today owns Tinder, OkCupid, Match.com, The Daily Beast, etc. You sure you'd want the top video website owned by IAC?
- treis 8y ago
  >Google is probably the only non-telco who owns significant infrastructure. So other than Google, the only other option for YouTube would have been a telco What about Amazon or Microsoft?
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    They don't own. They's recently (in the past 5 years) started taking part in building, but they don't own anything compared to Google and the major telcos.
  - shereadsthenews 8y ago
    They both have a lot of datacenters and private fiber between them but neither has anything like the ISP peering network that Google owns. Not even close.
- blub 8y ago
  Any of the above options would be better than the current reality, where Google is basically controlling video on the internet. They're long past their days of innocence.

puzzle 8y ago

That sounds plausible at first, but is inaccurate on multiple levels. By early 2006, YouTube had substantial peering in place. It's easy to prove: they talked about their programs at NANOG (https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog37/presentations/bill.norton.3.pdf https://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog37/presentations/bill.no...). Without those, they would have folded already. They were acquired by Google only at the end of the year. Google doesn't own all of its fiber. Also, some ISPs have made public claims of being paid by Google for transit traffic. Google, but also ISPs, saves a lot of money through peering or the Google Global Cache. This is also why YT had peering in 2006: remember that traffic moves across multiple ISPs and it wasn't just YT's costs that were going to go up with their exponential growth. Last but not least, consider that Netflix doesn't own fiber – or at least haven't announced any – and they haven't been sunk by network costs, thanks to peering and edge caching. [I used to work at Google and knew at the time quite a bit about YT's infrastructure. The above is all public information.]

shereadsthenews 8y ago
YouTube had some peering but not enough. It was a massive cash incinerator.
- aylmao 8y ago
  > It was a massive cash incinerator. I mean, this is not unheard of in Silicon Valley. Be it YouTube or some other company, truth is online user-generated video was bound to be huge given the growth in bandwidth capacity and improvement in smartphone cameras. The fact that specifically YouTube is what it is right now might be because it operates under the Google umbrella. Had the acquisition not happened, I'm sure we'd have at least a couple online video unicorns feeding off the huge demand for video and supply of people wanting to share.

erentz 8y ago

> Acquisition by Google is the only reason YouTube exists. If they had to pay for their networking they could not have survived (Google owns its own fiber and doesn't pay anyone for transit). By this logic Netflix shouldn’t exist because it doesn’t use Google’s network assets. I’m pretty sure YouTube’s advertising revenue should cover its cost of building out CDN and transport infrastructure.