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All these services are easy to replace. What isn't yet available elsewhere is the content discovery possibilities provided by Youtube, especially what would be

All these services are easy to replace. What isn't yet available elsewhere is the content discovery possibilities provided by Youtube, especially what would be considered "pirated" content on other sites without deep ties to the government (e.g. full CDs, movies that get uploaded and stay on yt for a long time, to be downloaded by millions).

andai 5y ago
A search engine for videos?
bilbo0s 5y ago
Deep ties to the government alone won't do it. You'll need deep ties to these content industries, and that will cost you money. Google has it. Most startups probably won't.
semitones 5y ago
"All these services are easy to replace" - I would like to agree, but I think that statement trivializes the endeavor a bit too much. For Docs for example: Sure, from a technical standpoint, creating a webapp that lets you modify a document, syncs over new changes on a regular basis, and lets multiple users collaborate on the same doc and the same time is certainly harder than making a hello world calculator, but it's definitely not that hard. Most of us could figure out how to do it, especially since it's 2021 and our hardware is up to the task. However, what is stupidly non-easy, is getting billions of people to use your solution, and for it to become the "standard" in society, for powerusers and non-powerusers alike, and for it not to have hiccups when a billion people use it. Oh, also, you need to somehow pay for the physical infrastructure that supports it, and the human beings that maintain it (hardware + software). The situation would be even more complicated for YouTube because of the nature of the content, i.e. a single video on YouTube might be viewed by billions of people, while even the most popular docs are viewed by thousands at most, and even then making a copy of a text document to then distribute off-platform is pretty trivial. And yes, we can spit out terms like blockchain w/ proof of stake, IPFS, etc. - but the tech isn't even the hard part, it's everything else that's hard (adoption, consensus, complexity for non-powerusers, funding, etc.)
- Hizonner 5y ago
  Why does any one thing have to be a "standard"? That's part of the problem.
  - dudus 5y ago
    Exactly, if we replace one standard for another what problem are we solving if the main goal was to reduce centralization.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - judge2020 5y ago
    If nobody uses something, what difference does it make?
    - j4yav 5y ago
      Everyone uses it or nobody uses it aren’t the only two options.
  - dimitrios1 5y ago
    Exactly. We only need a "standard" because everyone builds walled gardens and easy content distribution to multiple platforms is intentionally difficult. Right now you have to watch a "YouTube" video, instead of just a video on YouTube.
  - semitones 5y ago
    Standards != centralization. Standards apply more to protocols, and centralization applies more to ownership of data. For instance, there is an enormous benefit to the entire world from using a standard IP/TCP stack. Yet, we don't seem to suffer from a centralized authority making controversial or conflict-of-interest decisions regarding that stack. So what I was suggesting is that document-editing abide by some global protocol/standard, which would include storage, versioning, and permissions. As far as the choice of user-facing interfaces and implementations of logic around those standards, there need not be just one, or even a few. Everyone can bring something cool to the table and anyone can use whichever flavor they wish.
galaxyLogic 5y ago
Point is Google can offer services like Docs for free and still invest money in continually improving them because it sells advertisement-space on its free products. Sure you could build your own. But how would you finance the maintenance of your software and its free-for-customers delivery platform? Answer: By either selling advertisement, or by charging people for using it. The problem really is that by now Google has monopoly. Therefore it is difficult or impossible for you to compete with them.
- lazyjones 5y ago
  As a user, I don't need to compete with Google. I just need an alternative. If I needed collaborative document editing (as a replacement for Docs, a feature I don't use), I'd probably try something like https://www.samepage.io/ https://www.samepage.io/ . My only use of Docs at the moment is for maintaining some stock price calculations and tracking with the =GOOGLEFINANCE(...) function. There's probably some personal finance apps out there that do the same.

andai 5y ago

A search engine for videos?

bilbo0s 5y ago

Deep ties to the government alone won't do it. You'll need deep ties to these content industries, and that will cost you money. Google has it. Most startups probably won't.

semitones 5y ago

"All these services are easy to replace" - I would like to agree, but I think that statement trivializes the endeavor a bit too much. For Docs for example: Sure, from a technical standpoint, creating a webapp that lets you modify a document, syncs over new changes on a regular basis, and lets multiple users collaborate on the same doc and the same time is certainly harder than making a hello world calculator, but it's definitely not that hard. Most of us could figure out how to do it, especially since it's 2021 and our hardware is up to the task. However, what is stupidly non-easy, is getting billions of people to use your solution, and for it to become the "standard" in society, for powerusers and non-powerusers alike, and for it not to have hiccups when a billion people use it. Oh, also, you need to somehow pay for the physical infrastructure that supports it, and the human beings that maintain it (hardware + software). The situation would be even more complicated for YouTube because of the nature of the content, i.e. a single video on YouTube might be viewed by billions of people, while even the most popular docs are viewed by thousands at most, and even then making a copy of a text document to then distribute off-platform is pretty trivial. And yes, we can spit out terms like blockchain w/ proof of stake, IPFS, etc. - but the tech isn't even the hard part, it's everything else that's hard (adoption, consensus, complexity for non-powerusers, funding, etc.)

Hizonner 5y ago
Why does any one thing have to be a "standard"? That's part of the problem.
- dudus 5y ago
  Exactly, if we replace one standard for another what problem are we solving if the main goal was to reduce centralization.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- judge2020 5y ago
  If nobody uses something, what difference does it make?
  - j4yav 5y ago
    Everyone uses it or nobody uses it aren’t the only two options.
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  Exactly. We only need a "standard" because everyone builds walled gardens and easy content distribution to multiple platforms is intentionally difficult. Right now you have to watch a "YouTube" video, instead of just a video on YouTube.
- semitones 5y ago
  Standards != centralization. Standards apply more to protocols, and centralization applies more to ownership of data. For instance, there is an enormous benefit to the entire world from using a standard IP/TCP stack. Yet, we don't seem to suffer from a centralized authority making controversial or conflict-of-interest decisions regarding that stack. So what I was suggesting is that document-editing abide by some global protocol/standard, which would include storage, versioning, and permissions. As far as the choice of user-facing interfaces and implementations of logic around those standards, there need not be just one, or even a few. Everyone can bring something cool to the table and anyone can use whichever flavor they wish.

galaxyLogic 5y ago

Point is Google can offer services like Docs for free and still invest money in continually improving them because it sells advertisement-space on its free products. Sure you could build your own. But how would you finance the maintenance of your software and its free-for-customers delivery platform? Answer: By either selling advertisement, or by charging people for using it. The problem really is that by now Google has monopoly. Therefore it is difficult or impossible for you to compete with them.

lazyjones 5y ago
As a user, I don't need to compete with Google. I just need an alternative. If I needed collaborative document editing (as a replacement for Docs, a feature I don't use), I'd probably try something like https://www.samepage.io/ https://www.samepage.io/ . My only use of Docs at the moment is for maintaining some stock price calculations and tracking with the =GOOGLEFINANCE(...) function. There's probably some personal finance apps out there that do the same.