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Welcome to the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8 Tech companies are an oligopoly with a few actor
by Hokusai 7y ago
Welcome to the future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU3GzYcb1g8
Tech companies are an oligopoly with a few actors. Competitions do not offer enough pressure to make them change. Regulation is the only way forward if we do not want to end in a dystopia.
- ianai 7y agoAgree. We need some old school style trustbusting.
- pimmen 7y agoWe’re fortunate to have some politicians and officials who believe in anti-trust measures in the European Union. Margrethe Vestager is the current champion and I’m glad I’m under her wing rather than her American counterpart, Ajit Pai. I’m optimistic that regulations will come, sooner or later.
- 0xfaded 7y agoI originally succumbed to YouTube premium because of the bundled music. I remembered thinking at the time this bundling put Spotify at a disadvantage. When for unrelated reasons I started degoogling sure enough I went straight to Spotify. Can someone explain where the boundary here is for antitrust?
- Guest42 7y agoFor a moment I read that as truthbusting and got a little frightened
- izacus 7y agoHow would antitrust here look like? It's a subscription for a direct service... what's the monopoly solution here? Ordering Google to store and serve videos for free?
- bogwog 7y agoHow about breaking up Google? Seems like that'd solve a lot more problems than it'd create.
- izacus 7y agoWhich problems mentioned in the original article would that solve? Concretely? Would stand alone YouTube not want payment for their service?
- bogwog 7y agoIf YouTube were an independent company, they would have less leverage in the marketplace overall since they no longer are backed by Google's resources, no longer a part of Google's walled garden. Google will no longer have reason to give YouTube preferential treatment in ranking, advertising, etc. There's a lot of foundational things that will be shaken up, things which will force YouTube to actually be competitive, and actually provide value to users. Competitors will actually have a chance to dethrone them, and then the competitive forces of the marketplace, much like evolution, will lead to the crappiest business practices (like this premium spam) dying off and the market power shifting over to the users/customers. That's of course assuming there's sufficient competition, and the power doesn't just shift over to Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft or some other anti-competitive giants.
- ianai 7y agoWhich is why you can’t just break up one component of an oligopoly.
- cameronbrown 7y agoIt's not about competition or regulation. Someone needs to find a way to drive down the cost of bandwidth. Disclaimer in bio.
- Drakim 7y agoI have the feeling that if you drive down the cost of bandwidth, the businesses that rely on it will say "Thank you" and change nothing, merely pocketing the bigger margin themselves. The number of ads isn't proportional to bandwidth cost, it's about what their research shows they can get away with.
- bogwog 7y agoThe solution to that is more regulation to foster competition. Break up the giant monopolies and the market will naturally improve, and life will get better for everyone.
- zrm 7y agoHigh bandwidth costs are an advantage for big players like YouTube because their economies of scale allow them to pay less than smaller competitors. The more bandwidth costs the bigger their advantage. Lower bandwidth prices would both increase service provider competition and decrease costs. The provider competition would then push the cost savings away from providers and toward either paying creators more or attracting viewers by showing fewer ads (or both). It might not solve the entire problem but it would certainly be a step in the right direction.
- nvrspyx 7y agoI don’t really see how the cost of bandwidth is the main factor. What would change by lowering said cost? The corporations of the oligopoly would also benefit and I feel they would just have larger margins allowing them to keep their dominance. I’m no expert though, so I’m more curious than in disagreement.
- codegladiator 7y agoa 49 mb video watched a million times is 49 tb bandwidth. 1 tb bandwidth cost of aws is 236 usd a month.
- amelius 7y agoYes, the internet promised to be a place where everybody could be an independent broadcaster, yet this turned out to be a pipe dream.
- zaroth 7y agoThe problem was that it’s true without it being enough. It’s not hard to serve your own video streams. But good luck getting enough eyeballs to make it worthwhile.
- scottlegrand2 7y agoI always thought Amazon would build a YouTube killer. They're really the only company perfectly placed to do so. And yet while I'm pretty sure they've talked about it they've never acted on it.
- icebraining 7y agoWhat would the "killer" part be? Just being not-from-Google is not enough of a value proposition for most people.
- sircastor 7y agoSort of the equivalent of being able to transmit your own VHF signal, but having enough power to get it in getting off enough people to pay for it....
- icebraining 7y agoYou can't actually (legally) transmit your own VHF signal, though.
- valeg 7y ago>Regulation is the only way forward if we do not want to end in a dystopia. but what kind of regulation? The Access Act?[0] [0]: https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968 https://www.scribd.com/document/431507473/GOE19968
- wazoox 7y agoGood ol' friggin' Sherman Act. Break them up, all of them, to small pieces.