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I have a hard time believing that their website was more popular than YouTube. I remember using loads of different video streaming services before YouTube was b

I have a hard time believing that their website was more popular than YouTube. I remember using loads of different video streaming services before YouTube was bought by Google (e.g. Vimeo, Google Videos, etc) and I've never heard of livevideo. Also, Google Videos was Google's own YouTube competitor from before they bought YouTube, which arguably was anti-competitive because it was much easier to search for Google Videos from Google than for YouTube videos. The more likely explanation for why their search rank plummited is their shady backlinking between their properties. > The only one that survived was Justin. That eventually became twitch because they picked video games as a category and just eliminated everything else. And YouTube didn’t really go after one market like that. They went after all video on the internet, so Google let them kind of have video games and that was it. Their explanation for why Twitch succeeded doesn't hold water. My understanding is that video gaming is currently one of the most popular categories on YouTube today and probably has been since the beginning (e.g. PewDiePie started as a video gaming youtuber). They're directly going after Twitch with YouTube Gaming. And Twitch obviously hasn't been deplatformed by Google Search.

bduerst 7y ago
Also it's not good branding. I immediately thought this was LiveLeak, which is a different site than LiveVideo. But you're right - there are lots of players who carved out niches on the market to be profitable, since hosting video content is expensive. Vimeo, Twitch, even LiveLeak, cater to specific content while the generalist Youtube burned money for over a decade. When all the other generalists were pivoting, LiveVideo plowed ahead with something that wasn't profitable. This post-hoc rationalization and finger pointing feels like sour grapes.
- nostromo 7y ago
  This was 2006. LiveLeak wasn't a thing yet when LiveVideo launched.
- PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
  Google's branding is the worst, however. They had to buy YouTube, in part, because Google Video was such a failure. Nobody saw Google Video as something to put video INTO; everyone assumed it was a search engine for online video. They haven't improved. Google's app store is still called "Google Play," which doesn't tell anyone it's an app store. It sounds like something gaming-related, and that's it. Google Plus... need we go on?
Theodores 7y ago
Never heard of them either. YouTube was a simply better product. As was Facebook compared to mySpace. The innovative features weren't the right ones. YouTube may not have had them but ultimately in the market today we haven't got those features that seemed such a good idea at the time. Just because you can do clever stuff, e.g. showing multiple streams, doesn't mean that is what people want. The content was better on YouTube unless you really did want porn. It is not a problem Google paying people to do content for their platform in exclusive deals. They had pockets deep enough to do such things and this investment has paid off. Sure the startup with $50 million isn't going to be able to just sign up all of the big names but they also were not going to be able to pay as well as Google when it came to monetisation since they were going with adSense. Had they developed something special when it came to ad sales then they could have been on to something. Then in the search results there is no reason to believe Google were doing anything shady. The shadiest part could be the way Youtube was built for SEO. Every developer wants good SEO so it is only natural to try and excel in this area. Within YouTube they potentially had a better idea of how the Google search engine works so they could have written their front end to specifically game the system. I doubt they did that to a level beyond what outside developers can achieve.
sct202 7y ago
I looked at some of the webarchive screen shots and the live viewer counts on the videos seem kind of low, but that might just be my modern take on how many views is a lot.

bduerst 7y ago

Also it's not good branding. I immediately thought this was LiveLeak, which is a different site than LiveVideo. But you're right - there are lots of players who carved out niches on the market to be profitable, since hosting video content is expensive. Vimeo, Twitch, even LiveLeak, cater to specific content while the generalist Youtube burned money for over a decade. When all the other generalists were pivoting, LiveVideo plowed ahead with something that wasn't profitable. This post-hoc rationalization and finger pointing feels like sour grapes.

nostromo 7y ago
This was 2006. LiveLeak wasn't a thing yet when LiveVideo launched.
PunksATawnyFill 7y ago
Google's branding is the worst, however. They had to buy YouTube, in part, because Google Video was such a failure. Nobody saw Google Video as something to put video INTO; everyone assumed it was a search engine for online video. They haven't improved. Google's app store is still called "Google Play," which doesn't tell anyone it's an app store. It sounds like something gaming-related, and that's it. Google Plus... need we go on?

Theodores 7y ago

Never heard of them either. YouTube was a simply better product. As was Facebook compared to mySpace. The innovative features weren't the right ones. YouTube may not have had them but ultimately in the market today we haven't got those features that seemed such a good idea at the time. Just because you can do clever stuff, e.g. showing multiple streams, doesn't mean that is what people want. The content was better on YouTube unless you really did want porn. It is not a problem Google paying people to do content for their platform in exclusive deals. They had pockets deep enough to do such things and this investment has paid off. Sure the startup with $50 million isn't going to be able to just sign up all of the big names but they also were not going to be able to pay as well as Google when it came to monetisation since they were going with adSense. Had they developed something special when it came to ad sales then they could have been on to something. Then in the search results there is no reason to believe Google were doing anything shady. The shadiest part could be the way Youtube was built for SEO. Every developer wants good SEO so it is only natural to try and excel in this area. Within YouTube they potentially had a better idea of how the Google search engine works so they could have written their front end to specifically game the system. I doubt they did that to a level beyond what outside developers can achieve.

sct202 7y ago

I looked at some of the webarchive screen shots and the live viewer counts on the videos seem kind of low, but that might just be my modern take on how many views is a lot.