4 ms·
It’s not just small websites, though. Government information websites use YouTube too. Even activist websites criticizing the tech monopolies host with YouTube
by d2wa 5y ago
It’s not just small websites, though. Government information websites use YouTube too. Even activist websites criticizing the tech monopolies host with YouTube embeds. Even the distributed web/P2P platform IPFS hosts videos on YouTube instead of using it’s own P2P stack.
Anyhow: the point was that it’s too difficult to embed videos even if you’re willing to bear the hosting cost.
It costs roughly 0.0015 USD per hour video in 480p/VP9 hosted with BunnyCDN. The cost is manageable.
- csmpltn 5y ago> "It costs roughly 0.0015 USD per hour video in 480p/VP9 hosted with BunnyCDN. The cost is manageable." while True: downloadVideoFromDW2A(); Good luck managing this.
- account42 5y agoHow is that inherently harder to manage than while True: downloadIndexHtmlFromCSMPLTN();
- BiteCode_dev 5y agobandwith
- csmpltn 5y ago> "bandwith" Leave it to HackerNews to downvote the only sensible answer in this thread, rooted in a simple technical understanding of how distributed caching works.
- innocenat 5y agoIt's probably not downvoted because it's wrong, but it's because it doesn't help anyone who don't have "simple technical understanding of how distributed caching works."
- thewakalix 5y agoDown With the Bandness
- jasode 5y ago>Anyhow: the point was that it’s too difficult to embed videos even if you’re willing to bear the hosting cost. That may be one reason but like the gp, I also disagree with the blog's author that it's the "underlying problem". To further add to gp's point, Amazon AWS has: + tech staff with skills to deliver HTML video + billions to pay for self-hosting videos on its own infrastructure + incentives to avoid a competitor such as Google ... And yet, their official AWS re:invent page of videos points to urls on Youtube: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/amazon-dynamodb-session-videos-from-aws-reinvent-2020/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/amazon-dynamodb-sessio... Microsoft is another company with technical chops internally but they also uploaded some (not all) of their Channel9 videos to Youtube instead of self-hosting them. Yes, the complexity of HLS and DASH is also true but it's way down the list of reasons why many people host on Youtube: + $0 hosting costs + ad monetization (and by extension, viewership statistics tools) + audience reach (via recommendations, etc) A hypothetical improved <VIDEO> HTML tag does not alter the motivations in the bullet points above.
- supernovae 5y agoMicrosoft spent a lot of money trying to build a competitor to Youtube (And Google video) back in the day. (Soapbox) - But... no one wanted it. People have this weird habit of just following the trends and at the time, using anything and everything google did without question. Now they don't like it? Go use vimeo and pay for distribution with services like Cloudflare
- ethbr0 5y agoSince YouTube was already growing significantly before Google bought it, I'm not sure "Google" is the right answer. A better one is "easy sharing" + "pirated content" + "Lonely Island."
- supernovae 5y agoTrue, it was a wild west growth though - whereas Google put its PPC monetization behind it when it was purchased and no one else could compete with that prowess.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoNo one wants to host a 480p video and pay for it. They want to host a 4k video for free. YouTube captured the entire market by giving it away and now it's the expectation.
- d2wa 5y agoNot true. Few people — if anyone — wants their entire mobile data plan consumed by a single 4K video. Especially if it’s just a short clip.
- danaris 5y agoThat doesn't mean people don't want to serve 4K video. It means they want the video to be encoded in multiple resolutions for different levels of connection. Another thing that's not necessarily trivial, especially at scale.
- bootloop 5y agoAnd target device specific playback resolution also comes for free from YouTube. So it will not be 4k on mobile. But it could be.
- havkd 5y agoThankfully YouTube gives you different qualities depending on screen size and network speed, without you having to recode the video a dozen times. And for free. ;)
- madeofpalk 5y agoThat it, right? Some people want 480p video. Some people want 1080p video. Some people want 4k video. Even if the browser <video> tag did a great job at codec and resolution negotiation you still have to encode _at a minimum_ three copies of the video to hit the qualities. Multiply that each time you need a different codec for different devices. Or, upload one video to Youtube.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoI wasn't talking about consumption, I was talking about the people making the videos. They do not want people to watch it in 480p unless it's the last resort. It's a similar mindset to famous directors hating when people watch their movies on phones. I've fought and lost this battle many many times, and have used mobile bandwidth as a reason too. High resolution video hosting/streaming is free, so no one wants to pay to host it. I think there are major downsides to hosting on YouTube, but in my experience the vast majority of people do not care.
- weinzierl 5y agoI don't disagree but a nice counter example is Chaos Computer Club. They host their content on https://media.ccc.de/ https://media.ccc.de/. With all the videos from their conferences it is not very small site either.