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> People became used to how practical it is, even if the price is putting their livelihood at the whims of Google. I wonder what alternative history we could h
by richardfey 5y ago
> People became used to how practical it is, even if the price is putting their livelihood at the whims of Google.
I wonder what alternative history we could have had if YouTube wasn't acquired. It makes for an interesting short story writing prompt as well.
- londons_explore 5y agoIf YouTube wasn't acquired it would have died. There was no way to host video cheaper than ad revenue. Video just requires too much compute, storage and bandwidth compared to the few cents you get from an occasional ad click. Google could offer it cheap bandwidth and storage. They could use consumers love of Google products to force ISP's to deliver YouTube video traffic cheaper when ISP's threatened to block YouTube because it used too much bandwidth. Even with that, it wasn't profitable for 10+ years!