7 ms·

It would be cool if anybody else could make a real competitor to youtube then Google would have to actually cater more to content creators. However, sadly I thi

It would be cool if anybody else could make a real competitor to youtube then Google would have to actually cater more to content creators. However, sadly I think youtube is just too far ahead and google has way to many resources and time spent in the space for any competitor to even be able to make a dent into youtube's market.

amiga_500 6y ago
This is why they don't have to care. They have an effective monopoly.
malka 6y ago
youtube is a huge moneysink. not only would it be hard to build, it would never bring money. Google has entrenched themselves in a monopoly here. I think antitrust laws should be applied.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  To do what? It has a sort of natural monopoly in that it has network effects. If you broke it up, you'd end up with two unprofitable businesses. There are no shortage of youtube competitors- its not like they're locking out competitors with anticompetitive practices. For livestreaming they dont even have a monopoly because of twitch
- d1zzy 6y ago
  > Google has entrenched themselves in a monopoly here. I think antitrust laws should be applied. If it's true that it isn't profitable how would anti-trust laws make it better? If it's truly unprofitable then separating it from the mothership means it goes bankrupt so no more Youtube. That doesn't seem like a better outcome than what we have today. So it must be profitable to even begin to consider anti-trust regulation. Personally I think it is profitable although it likely has a very long time to recuperate investments (since it's mostly infrastructure like fiber, peering, caching accelerators, etc).
  - AlphaSite 6y ago
    Because then someone who doesn’t have Google’s money could actually compete. It wouldn’t become a huge exercise in dumping.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      If Google is subsidizing everyone else’s consumption of video, pricing it below market, that’s a good thing. Someone giving you free money or a discount you b didn’t even need to ask for is a good thing. Dumping out selling below cost harms no one but the seller.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        It hurts anyone where the product doesn't meet their needs, and their needs would be met if there were several healthy competitors.
      - malka 6y ago
        it gives too much political power to Google. If google decide to ban you from youtube, you become non existent.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    I think the argument is that YouTube is keeping the "price" artificially low which makes competition untenable. If at some point YouTube "raises their prices" (starts paying out less/takes significant extra money from creators) then you could argue that they were engaging in predatory pricing. I don't think it's true, but if you squint right you might get that impression.
  - nextweek2 6y ago
    > If it's truly unprofitable then separating it from the mothership means it goes bankrupt so no more YouTube You have to look back at Microsoft's Antitrust case around Internet Explorer, the were bundling the software into the operating system for free to kill any competition. It maybe a loss leader but it plays into an overall corporate strategy. Splitting YouTube off would not trigger it to go bankrupt, market forces would come into play, they'd have to seek revenue and others players would come into the market to offer a competitive offering.
- zarriak 6y ago
  How are you going to enforce antitrust upon something that costs 0 to consume and pays some people who post upon it? I think that ideally the legal problems that lead to stuff like content-id being necessary should be resolved so that you could theoretically have competitors but why should the thing that is a huge moneysink be forcibly removed from the company that sustains it? I am definitely in the top 1% of people that hate Google but I fear that anyone besides Google would be pruning videos from Youtube at an amazing clip.
- nl 6y ago
  Of course it's not a monopoly or moneysink. It's highly profitable ($5b a year in revenue and not huge costs given their peering agreements). TicTok, Instagram, Twitch, Dailymotion, FB Video, Vimeo, Netflix etc all are counterexamples.
- dylan604 6y ago
  As a monopolopy punishment, they should make any video that is available on YouTube and other platforms (Vimeo, etc) redirect to the other platform. Now, all of these other sites get an influx of users. We'll see who built the better infrastructure. sorry, my alarm clock is ringing, better wake up from the dreaming.
Razengan 6y ago
YouTube is one of the reasons I will probably always dislike Google for. They bought an existing service, made few improvements to it, made it worse in some ways, continue to ignore its major problems, and keep it artificially limited on their competitors' platforms (like not supporting the native Picture-in-Picture feature on iPad for years.) Worst of all, because they are So Big, people are preemptively disheartened from even imagining a competitor.
- joering2 6y ago
  Is the business even profitable? They claim youtube made $5 billion in revenue ads last 3 months but they don’t provide net numbers. Their typical text ad weights approx 250 kb in size (including all JS junk) and ther profit margin is “only” 23%. I doubt pushing 4k content for 15 minutes and serving one 15 cents ad puts them in green.
  - throwaway2048 6y ago
    Use Youtube without an adblocker, they have a lot more than just simple text ads. Also, bandwidth is essentially free for Google beyond capital costs due to the fact they are peered with practically every ISP on earth (traceroute Google.com).
    - d1zzy 6y ago
      If it was "free" then everyone could do it. The fact that very few people have the capability to provide the connectivity Google provides points to the contrary.
      - throwaway2048 6y ago
        I never said building the connectivity was free, In fact I said the opposite.
  - nl 6y ago
    Google has backbone peering agreements because they bought huge amounts of fibre in the 2001 and 2008 crashes. They don't really pay for bandwidth in the way you are thinking about it.
donmcronald 6y ago
I don't think Google is too far ahead. You don't have to compete with all of YouTube. I think LTT has the right idea with FloatPlane. If you can siphon off premium users that are willing to pay for premium channels you're getting the most valuable part of the system anyway (premium content and paying users). IMHO anyone starting or running a video content business should be viewing YouTube as a great way to externalize costs while starting up and as a way to generate some revenue off users that aren't willing to pay once you're established. The goal from day 1 should be to build a following and then to move all your premium users to another platform.
- chii 6y ago
  > valuable part of the system anyway (premium content and paying users). doubt. The most valuable part of the system is the large audience. Youtube's advertising dollars is vastly bigger than any of the premium content from other places. Unless the new premium platform is also powered by advertising and tracking, and selling of demographic data about the audience for targeted ad campaigns. There's very little that can currently compete with short-form video content for the masses.
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  Microsoft tried to siphon off the gamers with Mixer. Paid significant amounts of talent, built a reasonably good technical platform, leveraged Xbox, and gamers and game livestreaming are definitely one of the most profitable parts of YouTube for Google. It didn't succeed. If you're a large established video provider it works, but most people aren't film studios.
bdcravens 6y ago
For a large number of Youtube content creators, it's not the platform, it's the monetization opportunity.
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Vimeo? DailyMotion? LiveLeak?
- xvedejas 6y ago
  Facebook?
ALittleLight 6y ago
I've looked at https://lbry.tv/ https://lbry.tv/ recently. It seems pretty decent for YouTube replacement. One thing that they have is an automatic system to copy over your YouTube catalog and upload it to lbry.
CapricornNoble 6y ago
The people behind PornHub need to make a "PeopleHub" site for hosting non-pornographic content. Use the same business model, which seems to work well for the "Pro-Am" content creators on PH. That, or BitChute needs to finally release a mobile app.
- dbspin 6y ago
  BitChute is a cesspit of genuinely hateful and extremist content. That alone keeps away a majority of creators and viewers. It's like a silo school for kids who've been expelled from all the other schools in the area. Only in this case the bad kids are advocating genocide and racewar.
fsflover 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

amiga_500 6y ago

This is why they don't have to care. They have an effective monopoly.

malka 6y ago

youtube is a huge moneysink. not only would it be hard to build, it would never bring money. Google has entrenched themselves in a monopoly here. I think antitrust laws should be applied.

vikramkr 6y ago
To do what? It has a sort of natural monopoly in that it has network effects. If you broke it up, you'd end up with two unprofitable businesses. There are no shortage of youtube competitors- its not like they're locking out competitors with anticompetitive practices. For livestreaming they dont even have a monopoly because of twitch
d1zzy 6y ago
> Google has entrenched themselves in a monopoly here. I think antitrust laws should be applied. If it's true that it isn't profitable how would anti-trust laws make it better? If it's truly unprofitable then separating it from the mothership means it goes bankrupt so no more Youtube. That doesn't seem like a better outcome than what we have today. So it must be profitable to even begin to consider anti-trust regulation. Personally I think it is profitable although it likely has a very long time to recuperate investments (since it's mostly infrastructure like fiber, peering, caching accelerators, etc).
- AlphaSite 6y ago
  Because then someone who doesn’t have Google’s money could actually compete. It wouldn’t become a huge exercise in dumping.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    If Google is subsidizing everyone else’s consumption of video, pricing it below market, that’s a good thing. Someone giving you free money or a discount you b didn’t even need to ask for is a good thing. Dumping out selling below cost harms no one but the seller.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      It hurts anyone where the product doesn't meet their needs, and their needs would be met if there were several healthy competitors.
    - malka 6y ago
      it gives too much political power to Google. If google decide to ban you from youtube, you become non existent.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  I think the argument is that YouTube is keeping the "price" artificially low which makes competition untenable. If at some point YouTube "raises their prices" (starts paying out less/takes significant extra money from creators) then you could argue that they were engaging in predatory pricing. I don't think it's true, but if you squint right you might get that impression.
- nextweek2 6y ago
  > If it's truly unprofitable then separating it from the mothership means it goes bankrupt so no more YouTube You have to look back at Microsoft's Antitrust case around Internet Explorer, the were bundling the software into the operating system for free to kill any competition. It maybe a loss leader but it plays into an overall corporate strategy. Splitting YouTube off would not trigger it to go bankrupt, market forces would come into play, they'd have to seek revenue and others players would come into the market to offer a competitive offering.
zarriak 6y ago
How are you going to enforce antitrust upon something that costs 0 to consume and pays some people who post upon it? I think that ideally the legal problems that lead to stuff like content-id being necessary should be resolved so that you could theoretically have competitors but why should the thing that is a huge moneysink be forcibly removed from the company that sustains it? I am definitely in the top 1% of people that hate Google but I fear that anyone besides Google would be pruning videos from Youtube at an amazing clip.
nl 6y ago
Of course it's not a monopoly or moneysink. It's highly profitable ($5b a year in revenue and not huge costs given their peering agreements). TicTok, Instagram, Twitch, Dailymotion, FB Video, Vimeo, Netflix etc all are counterexamples.
dylan604 6y ago
As a monopolopy punishment, they should make any video that is available on YouTube and other platforms (Vimeo, etc) redirect to the other platform. Now, all of these other sites get an influx of users. We'll see who built the better infrastructure. sorry, my alarm clock is ringing, better wake up from the dreaming.

Razengan 6y ago

YouTube is one of the reasons I will probably always dislike Google for. They bought an existing service, made few improvements to it, made it worse in some ways, continue to ignore its major problems, and keep it artificially limited on their competitors' platforms (like not supporting the native Picture-in-Picture feature on iPad for years.) Worst of all, because they are So Big, people are preemptively disheartened from even imagining a competitor.

joering2 6y ago
Is the business even profitable? They claim youtube made $5 billion in revenue ads last 3 months but they don’t provide net numbers. Their typical text ad weights approx 250 kb in size (including all JS junk) and ther profit margin is “only” 23%. I doubt pushing 4k content for 15 minutes and serving one 15 cents ad puts them in green.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Use Youtube without an adblocker, they have a lot more than just simple text ads. Also, bandwidth is essentially free for Google beyond capital costs due to the fact they are peered with practically every ISP on earth (traceroute Google.com).
  - d1zzy 6y ago
    If it was "free" then everyone could do it. The fact that very few people have the capability to provide the connectivity Google provides points to the contrary.
    - throwaway2048 6y ago
      I never said building the connectivity was free, In fact I said the opposite.
- nl 6y ago
  Google has backbone peering agreements because they bought huge amounts of fibre in the 2001 and 2008 crashes. They don't really pay for bandwidth in the way you are thinking about it.

donmcronald 6y ago

I don't think Google is too far ahead. You don't have to compete with all of YouTube. I think LTT has the right idea with FloatPlane. If you can siphon off premium users that are willing to pay for premium channels you're getting the most valuable part of the system anyway (premium content and paying users). IMHO anyone starting or running a video content business should be viewing YouTube as a great way to externalize costs while starting up and as a way to generate some revenue off users that aren't willing to pay once you're established. The goal from day 1 should be to build a following and then to move all your premium users to another platform.

chii 6y ago
> valuable part of the system anyway (premium content and paying users). doubt. The most valuable part of the system is the large audience. Youtube's advertising dollars is vastly bigger than any of the premium content from other places. Unless the new premium platform is also powered by advertising and tracking, and selling of demographic data about the audience for targeted ad campaigns. There's very little that can currently compete with short-form video content for the masses.
Mindwipe 6y ago
Microsoft tried to siphon off the gamers with Mixer. Paid significant amounts of talent, built a reasonably good technical platform, leveraged Xbox, and gamers and game livestreaming are definitely one of the most profitable parts of YouTube for Google. It didn't succeed. If you're a large established video provider it works, but most people aren't film studios.

bdcravens 6y ago

For a large number of Youtube content creators, it's not the platform, it's the monetization opportunity.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

Vimeo? DailyMotion? LiveLeak?

xvedejas 6y ago
Facebook?

ALittleLight 6y ago

I've looked at https://lbry.tv/ https://lbry.tv/ recently. It seems pretty decent for YouTube replacement. One thing that they have is an automatic system to copy over your YouTube catalog and upload it to lbry.

CapricornNoble 6y ago

The people behind PornHub need to make a "PeopleHub" site for hosting non-pornographic content. Use the same business model, which seems to work well for the "Pro-Am" content creators on PH. That, or BitChute needs to finally release a mobile app.

dbspin 6y ago
BitChute is a cesspit of genuinely hateful and extremist content. That alone keeps away a majority of creators and viewers. It's like a silo school for kids who've been expelled from all the other schools in the area. Only in this case the bad kids are advocating genocide and racewar.

fsflover 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube