4 ms·

It's not about competition or regulation. Someone needs to find a way to drive down the cost of bandwidth. Disclaimer in bio.

Drakim 7y ago
I 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 ago
  The 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 ago
  High 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 ago
I 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 ago
  a 49 mb video watched a million times is 49 tb bandwidth. 1 tb bandwidth cost of aws is 236 usd a month.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    I don't think that's quite right. 1TB/mo of CloudFront bandwidth is $90/mo (per [1]). Also, that's the on-demand price. The price with volume discounts is much lower. [1]: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#s=CloudFront&key=files/calc-211d62e4e5e937ad6f991d2a82acc72a776b3e0f&v=ver20191121vC https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#s=CloudFront&...
    - codegladiator 7y ago
      I guess sure even with your calculation that is still a considerable expense while on youtube the user might be getting some money for their video
  - zaroth 7y ago
    A 10Gbit connection at HE is going to cost you roughly $2,000/month, or about $65/day. That will serve your 49MB video roughly 2 million times a day. Let’s go with 50% average utilization, and say that means we need to monetize roughly 0.0065 cents per view to cover the bandwidth cost. I think YouTube charges something like 10 cents per ad view, but won’t charge if the user clicks Skip in that 5 second window. I’m not sure what percent of views result in a billable ad, but anecdotally I’ve heard it’s surprisingly high. I would assume storage is a much bigger cost factor, to say nothing of paying the engineers to develop and support the infrastructure.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  IMO the main reason a YouTube competitor fails to spawn is bandwidth costs and lack of advertisers making it immediately really unprofitable.
  - 7y ago
lossolo 7y ago
This will not help any competition. Google has its caches and own fibers all over the world. I can go and connect now in any IX and most data centers with Google AS and exchange traffic for free, which makes Google cost of bandwidth to most consumers in developed countries almost non-existent. Good luck competing with that as a startup. Google is using this infrastructure not only for Youtube. So unless you have billions to invest in your own infrastructure, Google will always have cheaper bandwidth than you.
lucb1e 7y ago
> Disclaimer in bio. Honest question: why not just write "I work for Google" instead of asking people to click through first? It's not significantly longer if that's what you're trying to avoid.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  You have a fair point - I usually write the full sentence.

Drakim 7y ago

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
High 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 ago

I 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 ago
a 49 mb video watched a million times is 49 tb bandwidth. 1 tb bandwidth cost of aws is 236 usd a month.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  I don't think that's quite right. 1TB/mo of CloudFront bandwidth is $90/mo (per [1]). Also, that's the on-demand price. The price with volume discounts is much lower. [1]: https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#s=CloudFront&key=files/calc-211d62e4e5e937ad6f991d2a82acc72a776b3e0f&v=ver20191121vC https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html#s=CloudFront&...
  - codegladiator 7y ago
    I guess sure even with your calculation that is still a considerable expense while on youtube the user might be getting some money for their video
- zaroth 7y ago
  A 10Gbit connection at HE is going to cost you roughly $2,000/month, or about $65/day. That will serve your 49MB video roughly 2 million times a day. Let’s go with 50% average utilization, and say that means we need to monetize roughly 0.0065 cents per view to cover the bandwidth cost. I think YouTube charges something like 10 cents per ad view, but won’t charge if the user clicks Skip in that 5 second window. I’m not sure what percent of views result in a billable ad, but anecdotally I’ve heard it’s surprisingly high. I would assume storage is a much bigger cost factor, to say nothing of paying the engineers to develop and support the infrastructure.
cameronbrown 7y ago
IMO the main reason a YouTube competitor fails to spawn is bandwidth costs and lack of advertisers making it immediately really unprofitable.
- 7y ago

lossolo 7y ago

This will not help any competition. Google has its caches and own fibers all over the world. I can go and connect now in any IX and most data centers with Google AS and exchange traffic for free, which makes Google cost of bandwidth to most consumers in developed countries almost non-existent. Good luck competing with that as a startup. Google is using this infrastructure not only for Youtube. So unless you have billions to invest in your own infrastructure, Google will always have cheaper bandwidth than you.

lucb1e 7y ago

> Disclaimer in bio. Honest question: why not just write "I work for Google" instead of asking people to click through first? It's not significantly longer if that's what you're trying to avoid.

cameronbrown 7y ago
You have a fair point - I usually write the full sentence.