> Sounds like PornHub or similar could easily branch into providing a separate service for general videos if they wanted. They already have all this stuff down

> Sounds like PornHub or similar could easily branch into providing a separate service for general videos if they wanted. They already have all this stuff down for the most part. The key part there is "if they wanted." Any upstart would have to burn who knows how much capital to try and ramp up, hosting videos for free and getting only a tiny fraction of the ad revenue that Google can extract from a video due to their smaller scale. Even if somebody wanted to subsidize this with reserves or VC funding, the endgame is that they're competing directly against Google, and if faced with actual competition Google can always afford to undercut them until they ran out of reserves or VC funding. Far better for these sites to claim a niche that Google has no interest in and just fly below the radar.