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From time to time I have these "nostalgia attacks", usually late at night when it's only me and whisky. I go down the rabbit hole chasing old commercials, fragm

From time to time I have these "nostalgia attacks", usually late at night when it's only me and whisky. I go down the rabbit hole chasing old commercials, fragments of news shows, live concerts, music videos and so on from the 80s. It's a magical feeling, for a brief moment my mind goes back in time, a true time machine. I just hope that the old obscure stuff won't disappear from YouTube, sometimes I get the itch to start downloading and preserving it, but part of the charm is discovering "new" stuff, watching over and over the same videos wouldn't be as much fun.

t34543 7y ago
YouTube is a precious archive of another time in all our lives. Let’s hope it’s not eaten up by the chase of profit and/or politics.
- stemuk 7y ago
  > by the chase of profit I am honestly surprised how Google was able to keep up YouTube for so long despite a severe lack of profits. Even though Youtube made a net loss in the hundreds of millions for years Google kept it up and running and drastically expanded its feature set into areas like live streaming etc. As far as I know YouTube has now reached break even, but I believe Google deserves credit for having the vision and tolerance for failure to keep YouTube up for such a long time without a dollar of profit, not to speak of the enormous political and financial risk YouTube poses because of copyrighted or harmful material.
  - retSava 7y ago
    It would be interesting to hear an updated figure now. My impressions is heavily increased monetization across the whole thing. Nowadays, more than one ad shown, often unskippable, and constant nags/"reminders" about YT prime (red?) and Music.
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    I don't think Google deserves credit for keeping a money losing YouTube alive for so long. It's anti-competitive. Innovation that might have existed and been better was likely strangled because it couldn't compete with the money losing behemoth that is (or was) YouTube.
    - t34543 7y ago
      I do think they get credit for not killing it off, as they often do to other projects. Are the YouTube losses equivalent to loose change to Google? Probably, but that won’t stop me from being thankful someone had the vision to keep it alive.

t34543 7y ago

YouTube is a precious archive of another time in all our lives. Let’s hope it’s not eaten up by the chase of profit and/or politics.

stemuk 7y ago
> by the chase of profit I am honestly surprised how Google was able to keep up YouTube for so long despite a severe lack of profits. Even though Youtube made a net loss in the hundreds of millions for years Google kept it up and running and drastically expanded its feature set into areas like live streaming etc. As far as I know YouTube has now reached break even, but I believe Google deserves credit for having the vision and tolerance for failure to keep YouTube up for such a long time without a dollar of profit, not to speak of the enormous political and financial risk YouTube poses because of copyrighted or harmful material.
- retSava 7y ago
  It would be interesting to hear an updated figure now. My impressions is heavily increased monetization across the whole thing. Nowadays, more than one ad shown, often unskippable, and constant nags/"reminders" about YT prime (red?) and Music.
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  I don't think Google deserves credit for keeping a money losing YouTube alive for so long. It's anti-competitive. Innovation that might have existed and been better was likely strangled because it couldn't compete with the money losing behemoth that is (or was) YouTube.
  - t34543 7y ago
    I do think they get credit for not killing it off, as they often do to other projects. Are the YouTube losses equivalent to loose change to Google? Probably, but that won’t stop me from being thankful someone had the vision to keep it alive.