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And Youtube wouldn't last long on its own. Regarding infra, they were not capable of reaching the scale they needed and were already struggling by the time the

And Youtube wouldn't last long on its own. Regarding infra, they were not capable of reaching the scale they needed and were already struggling by the time they got acquired. On the money side, they couldn't attract advertisers as well as Google.

aspenmayer 2y ago
My point was that for whatever reason(s), Google chose to buy YouTube, while continuing to work on Google Video (which was started the month before YouTube), instead of buying a different competitor. Given that YouTube was founded by 3 PayPal alums and was angel investor funded while being one of the top most visited sites at the time of its acquisition by Google, I am inclined to believe that their issues you mentioned above and others not mentioned would have been resolved in-house, via their partnership with Google Video or another company, or via acquisition by another company. I don’t think it’s likely that YouTube would have failed as a company with the founders and investors it had, such as Sequoia, as it was simply too popular. YouTube had already started running ads for ~9 months before acquisition, though they were initially against pre-roll and other site-wide ads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube > Participatory video ads were designed to link specific promotions to specific channels rather than advertising on the entire platform at once. When the ads were introduced, in August 2006, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley rejected the idea of expanding into areas of advertising seen as less user-friendly at the time, saying, "we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no." However, YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.

aspenmayer 2y ago

My point was that for whatever reason(s), Google chose to buy YouTube, while continuing to work on Google Video (which was started the month before YouTube), instead of buying a different competitor. Given that YouTube was founded by 3 PayPal alums and was angel investor funded while being one of the top most visited sites at the time of its acquisition by Google, I am inclined to believe that their issues you mentioned above and others not mentioned would have been resolved in-house, via their partnership with Google Video or another company, or via acquisition by another company. I don’t think it’s likely that YouTube would have failed as a company with the founders and investors it had, such as Sequoia, as it was simply too popular. YouTube had already started running ads for ~9 months before acquisition, though they were initially against pre-roll and other site-wide ads. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube > Participatory video ads were designed to link specific promotions to specific channels rather than advertising on the entire platform at once. When the ads were introduced, in August 2006, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley rejected the idea of expanding into areas of advertising seen as less user-friendly at the time, saying, "we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no." However, YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.