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You are basically making the case for the anti-trust case here. i.e. it is very hard for another company to compete without "free compute".

by fisf 4y ago

sclarisse 4y ago
Eh. Using spare CPU capacity is not really anticompetitive behavior. That’s just an efficient enterprise. Something like Google favoring YouTube in search and suppressing their competitors would be actual anticompetitive behavior.
MichaelZuo 4y ago
But it's not like there will be a free competitor in any case? The closest might be peertube but that's nowhere near as reliable. Vimeo is paid. None of the other big companies seem willing to subsidize an online video service to the tune of tens of billions per annum.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  Which, again, makes the anti-trust case stronger. The case being: Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), and it's so effective that they have driven all competitors out of the market. By nearly any standard, Google's control of YouTube should be a prime anti-trust target.
  - UncleEntity 4y ago
    Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, abusing your monopoly is. And how does “providing compute” even matter, YouTube is just using google servers like every other google service. Not like they’re getting something for free because they’re part of the same company.
  - meragrin_ 4y ago
    > Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), You speak as if providing compute is their primary business. Youtube, existed long before their compute. They already had all their own compute. They only got into providing compute because they figured they could beat AWS with their own infrastructure.
himinlomax 4y ago
Anti-trust legislation is not meant to stop economies of scale, it's meant to curb monopolistic practices.
judge2020 4y ago
No, they're making the case for them being a monopoly. Unless Google is preventing others from purchasing compute or hard drives by buying up all of the supply, they are not performing any anti-competitive actions, which would not make them liable under any anti-trust statutes. I don't think anyone's in doubt YT is a monopoly with how big and widely-used it is. It's just that they continue to survive because of how well they execute their plan of making a good service that gives users what they want (fast, instant access to videos that appeal to them) and pays out creators enough to where they can make a living, or even build a media company (LTT), off of the adsense and monetization opportunities YT enables.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Preferentially giving YouTube access to ressources is indeed an anti-competitive action. That’s part of the vertical restraint kind. YT isn’t a monopoly however. It might be dominant depending of how you define the markets but it does have competitors.
  - scarface_74 4y ago
    That's not in any sense of the word how anti-trust works. That's just like saying that car manufacturers can't use idle capacity to help start a new line of vehicles just because a new car manufacturer couldn't create a new car line.
    - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
      No, it’s not comparable in any ways. Car manufacturers sell cars. That’s their main business. Here we have Google using its dominant position in another market to prop up another activity through an advantage. That’s most definitely fall under anti-competitive law at least in Europe (I don’t care about the US. The modern interpretation of American antitrust laws is a complete joke).
      - scarface_74 4y ago
        Apple's main business was selling computers. Should they not have been allowed to branch out to sell phones or before that music players? Netflix had a dominant business in shipping DVDs to customers. Should they have not branched out to streaming? It's silly to say that companies should never be allowed to branch out to other businesses.
detourdog 4y ago
I bet an individual with a static IP could make more money self-publishing than using youtube. I see federation and countless other things that compete with youtube. Access to "free" compute time. Any "free" compute time is likely to be transient and nothing to build a business on.
waboremo 4y ago
Anti-trust wouldn't apply here because there is very little stopping someone from creating a video hosting company and doing fine. Plenty of alternatives exist as well here, Tiktok, Vimeo, Twitch, Patreon all to varying degrees of scale. Where I would try to nail Google/Youtube for with anti-trust is the merging of Music and TV/Movies into Youtube as well as the reliance of Google ads on Youtube. Both of those are incredibly annoying to deal with as a competitor and give Google the ability to corner the market on multiple fronts. Roku has highlighted this themselves, Google leveraging Youtube to make brand deals that other competitors cannot.
cma 4y ago
Antitrust isn't supposed to tamp down on those kind of efficiencies. Google offers the idle time on the market as well with spot instances, so they pay an opportunity cost.
scarface_74 4y ago
That's not how anti-trust works. Are you really saying that no company should be able to create a new product based on resources it already has? Why stop at compute? Why not make it an "anti-trust" case that Apple leverages its same operating system and chip design across multiple devices? Or Amazon uses its same logistics network to deliver more than just books?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  This is big business pretending to be small to distract attention from market dominance, and pretending to be creative to distract attention from a strategy of acquisition rather than origination. Your argument is valid, but scale matters. Think of a game of Monopoly; you can usually tell who's going to win well before the game concludes, and you can guess which players will lose well before that.
  - scarface_74 4y ago
    And if Google hadn't acquired YouTube it wouldn't exist today. It would have either been sued out of existence or the infrastructure costs wouldn't be sustainable. But let's not pretend that the little guy wants to go public. If they do, they are naive. Out of all of the companies, that YC has invested in, maybe 5 have actually gone public. Every startup knows the game is to get acquired. The fact is that some things need scale to succeed. OpenAI for instance was never going to be able to afford the compute it needed without being subsidized by MS.
    - anigbrowl 4y ago
      But how did YouTube get founded in the first place, and become successful as a video-sharing platform for original content? Or how did Google come to exist, when the market was dominated by (then-) huge firms like Yahoo, Lycos, and Altavista? Both companies had a first mover advantage by deploying a more scaleable technical innovation in a somewhat stealthy way. OpenAI is subsidized as you say, but StabilityAI promptly ate their lunch int he image production field and is hoping to do the same with LLMs.
morpheuskafka 4y ago
Actually he is making the counterargument to anti-trust, which is that integration increases efficiency and total surplus.
- sScTE9qEMCxEk34 4y ago
  90% of the "efficiency" and "surplus" is the fact that no one can effectively compete. Which is why it's anti-competitive.
jldugger 4y ago
What OP basically described is use case for cloud computing and spot markets. Even if only internally. While it could be made open, I don't see any regulatory reason to. We want companies to reduce waste, and it doesn't make sense to require all companies to build public facing cloud, and integrate their flagships into it, just to open it up to their competitors. It would be like telling Apple that its factories reusing scrap aluminum to make iPhone cases is an unfair competitive practice.

You are basically making the case for the anti-trust case here. i.e. it is very hard for another company to compete without "free compute".

by fisf 4y ago

You are basically making the case for the anti-trust case here. i.e. it is very hard for another company to compete without "free compute".

sclarisse 4y ago

Eh. Using spare CPU capacity is not really anticompetitive behavior. That’s just an efficient enterprise. Something like Google favoring YouTube in search and suppressing their competitors would be actual anticompetitive behavior.

MichaelZuo 4y ago

But it's not like there will be a free competitor in any case? The closest might be peertube but that's nowhere near as reliable. Vimeo is paid. None of the other big companies seem willing to subsidize an online video service to the tune of tens of billions per annum.

pwinnski 4y ago
Which, again, makes the anti-trust case stronger. The case being: Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), and it's so effective that they have driven all competitors out of the market. By nearly any standard, Google's control of YouTube should be a prime anti-trust target.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, abusing your monopoly is. And how does “providing compute” even matter, YouTube is just using google servers like every other google service. Not like they’re getting something for free because they’re part of the same company.
- meragrin_ 4y ago
  > Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), You speak as if providing compute is their primary business. Youtube, existed long before their compute. They already had all their own compute. They only got into providing compute because they figured they could beat AWS with their own infrastructure.

himinlomax 4y ago

Anti-trust legislation is not meant to stop economies of scale, it's meant to curb monopolistic practices.

judge2020 4y ago

No, they're making the case for them being a monopoly. Unless Google is preventing others from purchasing compute or hard drives by buying up all of the supply, they are not performing any anti-competitive actions, which would not make them liable under any anti-trust statutes. I don't think anyone's in doubt YT is a monopoly with how big and widely-used it is. It's just that they continue to survive because of how well they execute their plan of making a good service that gives users what they want (fast, instant access to videos that appeal to them) and pays out creators enough to where they can make a living, or even build a media company (LTT), off of the adsense and monetization opportunities YT enables.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
Preferentially giving YouTube access to ressources is indeed an anti-competitive action. That’s part of the vertical restraint kind. YT isn’t a monopoly however. It might be dominant depending of how you define the markets but it does have competitors.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  That's not in any sense of the word how anti-trust works. That's just like saying that car manufacturers can't use idle capacity to help start a new line of vehicles just because a new car manufacturer couldn't create a new car line.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    No, it’s not comparable in any ways. Car manufacturers sell cars. That’s their main business. Here we have Google using its dominant position in another market to prop up another activity through an advantage. That’s most definitely fall under anti-competitive law at least in Europe (I don’t care about the US. The modern interpretation of American antitrust laws is a complete joke).
    - scarface_74 4y ago
      Apple's main business was selling computers. Should they not have been allowed to branch out to sell phones or before that music players? Netflix had a dominant business in shipping DVDs to customers. Should they have not branched out to streaming? It's silly to say that companies should never be allowed to branch out to other businesses.

detourdog 4y ago

I bet an individual with a static IP could make more money self-publishing than using youtube. I see federation and countless other things that compete with youtube. Access to "free" compute time. Any "free" compute time is likely to be transient and nothing to build a business on.

waboremo 4y ago

Anti-trust wouldn't apply here because there is very little stopping someone from creating a video hosting company and doing fine. Plenty of alternatives exist as well here, Tiktok, Vimeo, Twitch, Patreon all to varying degrees of scale. Where I would try to nail Google/Youtube for with anti-trust is the merging of Music and TV/Movies into Youtube as well as the reliance of Google ads on Youtube. Both of those are incredibly annoying to deal with as a competitor and give Google the ability to corner the market on multiple fronts. Roku has highlighted this themselves, Google leveraging Youtube to make brand deals that other competitors cannot.

cma 4y ago

Antitrust isn't supposed to tamp down on those kind of efficiencies. Google offers the idle time on the market as well with spot instances, so they pay an opportunity cost.

scarface_74 4y ago

That's not how anti-trust works. Are you really saying that no company should be able to create a new product based on resources it already has? Why stop at compute? Why not make it an "anti-trust" case that Apple leverages its same operating system and chip design across multiple devices? Or Amazon uses its same logistics network to deliver more than just books?

anigbrowl 4y ago
This is big business pretending to be small to distract attention from market dominance, and pretending to be creative to distract attention from a strategy of acquisition rather than origination. Your argument is valid, but scale matters. Think of a game of Monopoly; you can usually tell who's going to win well before the game concludes, and you can guess which players will lose well before that.
- scarface_74 4y ago
  And if Google hadn't acquired YouTube it wouldn't exist today. It would have either been sued out of existence or the infrastructure costs wouldn't be sustainable. But let's not pretend that the little guy wants to go public. If they do, they are naive. Out of all of the companies, that YC has invested in, maybe 5 have actually gone public. Every startup knows the game is to get acquired. The fact is that some things need scale to succeed. OpenAI for instance was never going to be able to afford the compute it needed without being subsidized by MS.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    But how did YouTube get founded in the first place, and become successful as a video-sharing platform for original content? Or how did Google come to exist, when the market was dominated by (then-) huge firms like Yahoo, Lycos, and Altavista? Both companies had a first mover advantage by deploying a more scaleable technical innovation in a somewhat stealthy way. OpenAI is subsidized as you say, but StabilityAI promptly ate their lunch int he image production field and is hoping to do the same with LLMs.

morpheuskafka 4y ago

Actually he is making the counterargument to anti-trust, which is that integration increases efficiency and total surplus.

sScTE9qEMCxEk34 4y ago
90% of the "efficiency" and "surplus" is the fact that no one can effectively compete. Which is why it's anti-competitive.

jldugger 4y ago

What OP basically described is use case for cloud computing and spot markets. Even if only internally. While it could be made open, I don't see any regulatory reason to. We want companies to reduce waste, and it doesn't make sense to require all companies to build public facing cloud, and integrate their flagships into it, just to open it up to their competitors. It would be like telling Apple that its factories reusing scrap aluminum to make iPhone cases is an unfair competitive practice.