3 ms·

you're mad they didn't start charging and pushing ads earlier?

• lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Actually, yeah, that's a reasonable thing to be upset about. They used the lack of forced ads to ensure that competitors also could not force ads. Now that they've captured the market, they force ads.
  • wombat-man 3y ago
    Well if they forced ads earlier than whatever competitor they had that didn't would be doing the same thing but with a smaller runway. If all free video sites had ads, I think just on pure speed and scale youtube probably had higher costs overall anyway.
• dotnet00 3y ago
  I'm annoyed that people act like it's narcissistic or entitled for users to be mad that now that YouTube has killed most of their competition by subsidizing the business with Google money, they want to start doing the exact thing everyone else had tried to do, except now there isn't any other comparable option. Normally when a business takes massive losses to drive competition out in an industry that's hard to break into, then once they're sufficiently dominant, starts to raise prices, it's an antitrust issue.
  • wombat-man 3y ago
    The income has to come from somewhere. All new businesses will probably operate at a loss for some length of time. Sure, maybe if they forced ads earlier on, in an effort to be a profitable division earlier another competitor would have arisen. Whoever wins the online video site thing contest is going to end up making money one of two ways, subscriptions or ads. Idk that it makes a lot of sense to me to be mad at Google about it. If not them, some VC or something would have just taken the hit instead.