7 ms·

I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense.

vlan0 2y ago
Bandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze. Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.
- DanielHB 2y ago
  There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access. Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.
- dylan604 2y ago
  > But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming. Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder
  - ta1243 2y ago
    > they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window. Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead of you it's not spoilt).
  - Jakob 2y ago
    It’s actually not harder thanks to HLS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static files and can be very low latency. If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes harder, but everything else is thankfully solved. The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0 views in one second and millions in the next. Even with static content delivery that leads to all kinds of issues.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      > but everything else is thankfully solved. well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at Netflix as they can't figure it out.
- Symmetry 2y ago
  That's why companies doing streaming at less than Google's scale can pay Aakami or a company like them to do that, caching copies at datacenters around the world close to the people doing the watching.
aurareturn 2y ago
I don't think it's a "hit" for Google. They'll optimize ads to always ensure they make a profit from a view. It's a win/win.
- vasco 2y ago
  Google laid fiber cables across the ocean, they already own the whole infrastructure and rent it out. It's a cost only in the sense that they potentially can't sell as much capacity as without their own traffic going down the pipes.
scarab92 2y ago
Don't let the cloud providers fool you. Bandwidth is cheap, especially for Googles, Netflixes and Cloudflares of the world which peer with every ISP that matters.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  Is Comcast still charging content providers and CDNs for peering?
  - inemesitaffia 2y ago
    Yes. And peering with Comcast is almost the same price and transit. deutsche telekom, Telstra and the Korean Telcos also do this.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Yeah and that is their point. And it's actually highly problematic just how much discount the large giants get on traffic - it effectively blocks any competitors not backed by some very deep pockets.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Google owns a large percentage of the backbone and does not pay for traffic. It owns not just its own fiber, but also leases dark fiber and right of way. Google has been buying railroad for access to right of way to lay fiber since the early 2000s. Peering agreements using their networks give them transit for free on other networks. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-lighting-up-dark-fiber-all-over-the-country https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-li...
- wbl 2y ago
  The reality of these relationships is more complex especially in some markets. It's also not hard to be at the IX and benefit yourself.
- inopinatus 2y ago
  Cloudflare wishes it peered with everyone and steers its own astroturfing pressure groups hoping to achieve that. The economics are similar though; their major product remains DDoS sinking, so driving down the marginal cost of traffic is Cloudflare’s strategy. The difference is that the content they mediate is thereby an incentive towards peering and not the core business proposition.
HDThoreaun 2y ago
content is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service
- dylan604 2y ago
  "good" content that people want to watch is by far the biggest cost. you can find content for pennies on the dollar, but your viewers will not make it worth the expense as no advertisers will want to spend money with your low viewer count
SllX 2y ago
Ah, FAST services as referenced by the parent are an entire genre of streaming services that might have slipped under the radar for most Hacker News readers.[1] They’d be off my radar too since I’m not interested in them per se, but for Jason Snell’s excellent Downstream[2] podcast (earlier episodes co-hosted by Julia Alexander) covering basically the business of Hollywood with an emphasis on streaming services and rights. So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te... [2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream https://www.relay.fm/downstream
- dylan604 2y ago
  YouTube serving content with ads would be more AVOD (on-demand with ads) vs FAST. FAST typically means a linear feed programmed to play specific content at specific time just like tuning into a channel on OTA or cable networks.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    That's how it started, as far as I know, but these services now offer lots of content on-demand as well.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      if it is on-demand, then it is AVOD. A company that started as FAST might have pivoted or decided to release the content they used to program their FAST channel as AVOD as well. I've personally been involved in doing this very thing, but just look at the apps for like Max where they have their linear channel offerings within the same UI as their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar concept.
    - sib 2y ago
      Licensing is distinct for FAST and (A)VOD. That is, a service may have acquired the rights to show a specific title on FAST but not AVOD (or vice-versa).
- 2y ago
dumbfounder 2y ago
I agree with parent that the bigger issue is distribution. Installing random apps sucks. YouTube has distribution. If they can make more money off esoteric movies by using YouTube then that makes more sense than having an extremely long tail of content in your app that probably no one will discover.
TuringNYC 2y ago
>> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense. Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc. Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.
- jmholla 2y ago
  > Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max) With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying netflix to license their technology. The only feature I miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.
    - sfilmeyer 2y ago
      >or paying netflix to license their technology Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now. I get that their might be good options to license and that fewer companies should build crappy in-house products, but is Netflix one of them? From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.
adrr 2y ago
Biggest cost is generating an ad platform that can get enough data to serve relevant ads to people increasing the effectiveness of the ads. You can't beat googles ad platform in terms of data and targeting.
myself248 2y ago
If they just wanted to throw this stuff out there at minimal bandwidth costs, a page of .torrent files and a seedbox would get it done for pennies. "Streaming", who gives a hoot, just download it like everything else. "Service" can take a hike, video player software already exists and all the UI work is done. That part is utterly superfluous.
lillecarl 2y ago
Yep. I worked for Viaplay, the Swedish streaming "giant". Viaplay chose to "sell out" to Akamai, Level3 and Amazon in return for less CDN staff. Viaplay went -95% a month after my intuition made me leave. The problem was that the more users used the platform the more the users cost, linearly. They limited many streams to 720, which is a joke in 2020s. Netflix has openconnect, essentially a CDN in every big ISPs network, they can do 100g HTTPS per port!
- DanielHB 2y ago
  Damn man, what is going on at Viaplay now? My former team lead used to work there and went back after he left the place where we worked together. This was my intuition as well, unless you are doing B2B (with billing proportional to the streaming) you have to do the hosting yourself.
  - lillecarl 2y ago
    I don't know much anymore, I know they run more ads than content and that they're running very lean. A lot of people had to go when the stock tanked. I have some conspiracy theory that "they" wiped the stock harder than deserved to be able to buy back ownership on the cheap... I had to deal with Viaplay HR recently to get some documents out, took a month to get ahold of someone who could do it...
    - DanielHB 2y ago
      Jeez that sucks, was it all due to the decision to offload streaming to 3rd parties? How could they not do any cost estimations? It must have been a huge project that lasted months.
      - lillecarl 2y ago
        Viaplay started as a side gig to Nordic Entertainment Group so they started in the cloud and never questioned the decision again, I also got the impression that leadership didn't trust the tech competency and they didn't hire to fix it either. CDN providers are arguably better at CDN than we were, but it's just so expensive. Regarding why the company tanked, I think it was just a part of a bigger problem with inefficient operations, bloat and also going all-in investing in sports without acquiring enough customers. The Viaplay app(s) are quite bad so people find other ways to watch what they want.
throwaway48476 2y ago
Don't underestimate how cost conscious and inept copyright holders are.
deepspace 2y ago
Don't forget the cost of storage. In the days before streaming, WB used to store (digitized) movies on LTO tapes, which are dirt cheap. The programming software would load up a tape the day before broadcast and transfer the contents to disk. A streaming service needs to have all offered content available on disk. I can absolutely see WB offloading the storage cost to Google.

vlan0 2y ago

Bandwidth is a part, but that’s an easy hurdle. But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money. The juice really has to be worth the squeeze. Similar to running on-prep vs cloud.

DanielHB 2y ago
There are B2B SaaS services for streaming content, you upload the file they host and stream it for you with some API integrations to restrict access. Although I imagine they cost more than youtube's cut from ad-revenue.
dylan604 2y ago
> But running a CDN at that scale is gonna require experience and truck load of money Take Netflix for example. Their CDN at scale is pretty good for VOD type of delivery, but they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming. Even Twit..er, X falls down with their large event live streaming. Adding the "live" component makes everything just that much harder
- ta1243 2y ago
  > they continue to get it wrong for live event streaming And truly live (which means probably under 10 seconds from lens to viewer - i.e. the time it takes for the "X win" notification to pop up on your phone) is even harder than traditional "live" in the 40-60 second window. Ideally you want all viewer to view it at the same time (so when next-door are cheering on a feed 3 seconds ahead of you it's not spoilt).
- Jakob 2y ago
  It’s actually not harder thanks to HLS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming Live streaming with HLS is equal to distributing static files and can be very low latency. If you need to go below 3s of latency, yes it becomes harder, but everything else is thankfully solved. The bigger issue with live streaming are the peaks: 0 views in one second and millions in the next. Even with static content delivery that leads to all kinds of issues.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > but everything else is thankfully solved. well, since it's so easy for you, you should apply at Netflix as they can't figure it out.
Symmetry 2y ago
That's why companies doing streaming at less than Google's scale can pay Aakami or a company like them to do that, caching copies at datacenters around the world close to the people doing the watching.

aurareturn 2y ago

I don't think it's a "hit" for Google. They'll optimize ads to always ensure they make a profit from a view. It's a win/win.

vasco 2y ago
Google laid fiber cables across the ocean, they already own the whole infrastructure and rent it out. It's a cost only in the sense that they potentially can't sell as much capacity as without their own traffic going down the pipes.

scarab92 2y ago

Don't let the cloud providers fool you. Bandwidth is cheap, especially for Googles, Netflixes and Cloudflares of the world which peer with every ISP that matters.

aidenn0 2y ago
Is Comcast still charging content providers and CDNs for peering?
- inemesitaffia 2y ago
  Yes. And peering with Comcast is almost the same price and transit. deutsche telekom, Telstra and the Korean Telcos also do this.
mschuster91 2y ago
Yeah and that is their point. And it's actually highly problematic just how much discount the large giants get on traffic - it effectively blocks any competitors not backed by some very deep pockets.
- sitkack 2y ago
  Google owns a large percentage of the backbone and does not pay for traffic. It owns not just its own fiber, but also leases dark fiber and right of way. Google has been buying railroad for access to right of way to lay fiber since the early 2000s. Peering agreements using their networks give them transit for free on other networks. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-lighting-up-dark-fiber-all-over-the-country https://tech.slashdot.org/story/16/02/25/183201/google-is-li...
wbl 2y ago
The reality of these relationships is more complex especially in some markets. It's also not hard to be at the IX and benefit yourself.
inopinatus 2y ago
Cloudflare wishes it peered with everyone and steers its own astroturfing pressure groups hoping to achieve that. The economics are similar though; their major product remains DDoS sinking, so driving down the marginal cost of traffic is Cloudflare’s strategy. The difference is that the content they mediate is thereby an incentive towards peering and not the core business proposition.

HDThoreaun 2y ago

content is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service

dylan604 2y ago
"good" content that people want to watch is by far the biggest cost. you can find content for pennies on the dollar, but your viewers will not make it worth the expense as no advertisers will want to spend money with your low viewer count

SllX 2y ago

Ah, FAST services as referenced by the parent are an entire genre of streaming services that might have slipped under the radar for most Hacker News readers.[1] They’d be off my radar too since I’m not interested in them per se, but for Jason Snell’s excellent Downstream[2] podcast (earlier episodes co-hosted by Julia Alexander) covering basically the business of Hollywood with an emphasis on streaming services and rights. So this is basically just using YouTube as a FAST service. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_television https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_ad-supported_streaming_te... [2]: https://www.relay.fm/downstream https://www.relay.fm/downstream

dylan604 2y ago
YouTube serving content with ads would be more AVOD (on-demand with ads) vs FAST. FAST typically means a linear feed programmed to play specific content at specific time just like tuning into a channel on OTA or cable networks.
- lxgr 2y ago
  That's how it started, as far as I know, but these services now offer lots of content on-demand as well.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    if it is on-demand, then it is AVOD. A company that started as FAST might have pivoted or decided to release the content they used to program their FAST channel as AVOD as well. I've personally been involved in doing this very thing, but just look at the apps for like Max where they have their linear channel offerings within the same UI as their VOD. While Max isn't ad supported, it's a similar concept.
  - sib 2y ago
    Licensing is distinct for FAST and (A)VOD. That is, a service may have acquired the rights to show a specific title on FAST but not AVOD (or vice-versa).
2y ago

dumbfounder 2y ago

I agree with parent that the bigger issue is distribution. Installing random apps sucks. YouTube has distribution. If they can make more money off esoteric movies by using YouTube then that makes more sense than having an extremely long tail of content in your app that probably no one will discover.

TuringNYC 2y ago

>> I assume that bandwidth is by far the biggest cost for running your own streaming service, so letting Google take that hit makes a lot of sense. Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max), I'd say the biggest cost is probably hiring a decent Engineering+Product+Test team. There are complexities here, like making these things work on different TV brands, versions, older models, etc. Pushing all the complexity to YT seems like a total no-brainer.

jmholla 2y ago
> Judging from the clunky, buggy, nonsensical experiences on 2nd tier streaming services (i.e., everything except Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Disney+, Max) With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. I run into an at least issue daily (usually multiple times a day) in every streaming app I use except Netflix.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >With the exception of Netflix, these other companies' apps are similarly buggy and painful to use. Yeah it's really annoying that they all recreated the wheel instead of just playing ball with netflix or paying netflix to license their technology. The only feature I miss from another service is that x-ray view stuff that Amazon has to let you know who is in a scene.
  - sfilmeyer 2y ago
    >or paying netflix to license their technology Does Netflix license their technology to anyone? I know of examples like BAMTech, although I don't even know if they still take on outside clients or just do Disney now. I get that their might be good options to license and that fewer companies should build crappy in-house products, but is Netflix one of them? From Netflix's perspective, it's not clear to me that the payment for licensing technology to e.g. NBC is worth it, versus hoping that they end up with an inferior product, especially when they're competing with each other for customers and licensed content.

adrr 2y ago

Biggest cost is generating an ad platform that can get enough data to serve relevant ads to people increasing the effectiveness of the ads. You can't beat googles ad platform in terms of data and targeting.

myself248 2y ago

If they just wanted to throw this stuff out there at minimal bandwidth costs, a page of .torrent files and a seedbox would get it done for pennies. "Streaming", who gives a hoot, just download it like everything else. "Service" can take a hike, video player software already exists and all the UI work is done. That part is utterly superfluous.

lillecarl 2y ago

Yep. I worked for Viaplay, the Swedish streaming "giant". Viaplay chose to "sell out" to Akamai, Level3 and Amazon in return for less CDN staff. Viaplay went -95% a month after my intuition made me leave. The problem was that the more users used the platform the more the users cost, linearly. They limited many streams to 720, which is a joke in 2020s. Netflix has openconnect, essentially a CDN in every big ISPs network, they can do 100g HTTPS per port!

DanielHB 2y ago
Damn man, what is going on at Viaplay now? My former team lead used to work there and went back after he left the place where we worked together. This was my intuition as well, unless you are doing B2B (with billing proportional to the streaming) you have to do the hosting yourself.
- lillecarl 2y ago
  I don't know much anymore, I know they run more ads than content and that they're running very lean. A lot of people had to go when the stock tanked. I have some conspiracy theory that "they" wiped the stock harder than deserved to be able to buy back ownership on the cheap... I had to deal with Viaplay HR recently to get some documents out, took a month to get ahold of someone who could do it...
  - DanielHB 2y ago
    Jeez that sucks, was it all due to the decision to offload streaming to 3rd parties? How could they not do any cost estimations? It must have been a huge project that lasted months.
    - lillecarl 2y ago
      Viaplay started as a side gig to Nordic Entertainment Group so they started in the cloud and never questioned the decision again, I also got the impression that leadership didn't trust the tech competency and they didn't hire to fix it either. CDN providers are arguably better at CDN than we were, but it's just so expensive. Regarding why the company tanked, I think it was just a part of a bigger problem with inefficient operations, bloat and also going all-in investing in sports without acquiring enough customers. The Viaplay app(s) are quite bad so people find other ways to watch what they want.

throwaway48476 2y ago

Don't underestimate how cost conscious and inept copyright holders are.

deepspace 2y ago

Don't forget the cost of storage. In the days before streaming, WB used to store (digitized) movies on LTO tapes, which are dirt cheap. The programming software would load up a tape the day before broadcast and transfer the contents to disk. A streaming service needs to have all offered content available on disk. I can absolutely see WB offloading the storage cost to Google.