> Serving video is just expensive, period. That's part of it, but not the whole story. Network effect is a bigger force. People publish on YouTube because the

> Serving video is just expensive, period. That's part of it, but not the whole story. Network effect is a bigger force. People publish on YouTube because there's a large viewership, then YouTube gains viewership because people publish there. Other companies also have big economies of scale on hosting. Amazon, Microsoft and CloudFlare come to mind. Network effect, not cost, is the reason they haven't bothered trying to build competitors to YouTube. If they could guarantee a viewership half or even a quarter as large as YouTube, I'm sure they would have launched one by now.