4 ms·

YouTube costs Google $2 million per day

7 points by zeedotme 17y ago

Zarathu 17y ago
Cool! So, what else is new? Facebook isn't making any money?!
blhack 17y ago
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is google paying for bandwidth at all? Why doesn't google own their own bandwidth provider? Didn't they buy up a bunch of dark fiber a while ago? Lease it to the providers and use that to subsidize their own bandwidth. Or am I totally missing the point?
- philwelch 17y ago
  If Google had their own bandwidth (hell, their own Tier 1/2 network is feasible) it might provide them too great a temptation to do evil.
- chrisbolt 17y ago
  They're probably already doing settlement-free peering with various ISPs due to their sheer volume of data transfer, which would mean that they aren't paying for all of the bandwidth they're using. Otherwise, the ISPs they're peering with would have to pay someone else for the bandwidth to use YouTube.
- rbranson 17y ago
  Google probably has SOME connectivity they pay for, but by now they are effectively their own Tier 1 network, considering how much Internet traffic flows to their servers. They have a 2-byte ASN, which basically means they're a major backbone network. ISPs drool at the chance to peer with Google and get tariff-free YouTube/Google traffic, which probably constitutes a significant chunk of their overall volume. Considering that Google has all of these little mini-datacenters spread throughout major colo facilities, a ton of the edge-to-edge traffic probably flows over in-building GigE or 10GigE. It probably costs them a penny per TB delivered to a peered ISP rather than $.05/GB us peons pay at the colo. The ~8mbit multi-T1 connection at my office amounts to about 38 cents per gigabyte in or out if we use it at 100% capacity 24/7/365. That's still more expensive than the 250GB capped Comcast user, who's effectively paying about 20 cents per gigabyte.
zandorg 17y ago
Eric Schmidt was talking about how 'micropayments' were the solution. Maybe people would pay a couple cents per video.
- blhack 17y ago
  Would you? For me, youtube has largely replaced pirating music as a means for discovering bands (this is why it angers me so much when videos get muted). The cost for me to check out a band I might be interested in is ~$0.00. If they started charging me for this, I would either want something that I got to keep, or I would start pirating again.
  - zandorg 17y ago
    But music videos are promotional, meaning the label would pay YouTube/Google for the cost of distribution. You don't get CD quality on YouTube (and I actively buy CDs because they sound better to me than MP3). I mean TV shows, lectures and science programs - video with educational value.
lurkinggrue 17y ago
Yes, but that is $2 million in internet dollars.
mdasen 17y ago
Based on Credit Suisse's bandwidth cost estimate, it seems like YouTube would have to be pushing more than 10PB per day (petabytes). That's assuming a $0.10/GB bandwidth cost. Now, I'm sure that Google is getting a lower bandwidth cost than I can get on a dedicated server as just me with my credit card. So, I think it's safe to assume from those numbers that Google's pushing a few dozen petabytes from YouTube every day. That's a lot of data.
oldgregg 17y ago
I'm guessing they can hold out long enough for flash p2p penetration.
kierank 17y ago
Every other week these figures appear and every time on HN they are debunked. The Credit Suisse analyst's report has little idea about how delivering large amounts of data on the net works. See my previous comments on this story for more information.
- kqr2 17y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546303 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546303
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  i think it's fair to say that with the major providers colluding no one knows how much it actually costs to send data.
dspeyer 17y ago
There was a big media frenzy back when Google first announced its edge-caches physically located in ISP server rooms: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/16/edge-caching-vs-preferential-treatment/ http://techliberation.com/2008/12/16/edge-caching-vs-prefere... http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Wall-Street-Journals-Google-Hatchet-Job-99684 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Wall-Street-Journals-... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-of-caching.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutralit... Why has everyone forgotten?

7 points by zeedotme 17y ago

Cool! So, what else is new? Facebook isn't making any money?!

Maybe this is a stupid question, but why is google paying for bandwidth at all? Why doesn't google own their own bandwidth provider? Didn't they buy up a bunch of dark fiber a while ago? Lease it to the providers and use that to subsidize their own bandwidth. Or am I totally missing the point?

philwelch 17y ago
If Google had their own bandwidth (hell, their own Tier 1/2 network is feasible) it might provide them too great a temptation to do evil.
chrisbolt 17y ago
They're probably already doing settlement-free peering with various ISPs due to their sheer volume of data transfer, which would mean that they aren't paying for all of the bandwidth they're using. Otherwise, the ISPs they're peering with would have to pay someone else for the bandwidth to use YouTube.
rbranson 17y ago
Google probably has SOME connectivity they pay for, but by now they are effectively their own Tier 1 network, considering how much Internet traffic flows to their servers. They have a 2-byte ASN, which basically means they're a major backbone network. ISPs drool at the chance to peer with Google and get tariff-free YouTube/Google traffic, which probably constitutes a significant chunk of their overall volume. Considering that Google has all of these little mini-datacenters spread throughout major colo facilities, a ton of the edge-to-edge traffic probably flows over in-building GigE or 10GigE. It probably costs them a penny per TB delivered to a peered ISP rather than $.05/GB us peons pay at the colo. The ~8mbit multi-T1 connection at my office amounts to about 38 cents per gigabyte in or out if we use it at 100% capacity 24/7/365. That's still more expensive than the 250GB capped Comcast user, who's effectively paying about 20 cents per gigabyte.

zandorg 17y ago

Eric Schmidt was talking about how 'micropayments' were the solution. Maybe people would pay a couple cents per video.

blhack 17y ago
Would you? For me, youtube has largely replaced pirating music as a means for discovering bands (this is why it angers me so much when videos get muted). The cost for me to check out a band I might be interested in is ~$0.00. If they started charging me for this, I would either want something that I got to keep, or I would start pirating again.
- zandorg 17y ago
  But music videos are promotional, meaning the label would pay YouTube/Google for the cost of distribution. You don't get CD quality on YouTube (and I actively buy CDs because they sound better to me than MP3). I mean TV shows, lectures and science programs - video with educational value.

lurkinggrue 17y ago

Yes, but that is $2 million in internet dollars.

mdasen 17y ago

Based on Credit Suisse's bandwidth cost estimate, it seems like YouTube would have to be pushing more than 10PB per day (petabytes). That's assuming a $0.10/GB bandwidth cost. Now, I'm sure that Google is getting a lower bandwidth cost than I can get on a dedicated server as just me with my credit card. So, I think it's safe to assume from those numbers that Google's pushing a few dozen petabytes from YouTube every day. That's a lot of data.

oldgregg 17y ago

I'm guessing they can hold out long enough for flash p2p penetration.

kierank 17y ago

Every other week these figures appear and every time on HN they are debunked. The Credit Suisse analyst's report has little idea about how delivering large amounts of data on the net works. See my previous comments on this story for more information.

kqr2 17y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546303 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=546303
nazgulnarsil 17y ago
i think it's fair to say that with the major providers colluding no one knows how much it actually costs to send data.

dspeyer 17y ago

There was a big media frenzy back when Google first announced its edge-caches physically located in ISP server rooms: http://techliberation.com/2008/12/16/edge-caching-vs-preferential-treatment/ http://techliberation.com/2008/12/16/edge-caching-vs-prefere... http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Wall-Street-Journals-Google-Hatchet-Job-99684 http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/The-Wall-Street-Journals-... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122929270127905065.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutrality-and-benefits-of-caching.html http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/12/net-neutralit... Why has everyone forgotten?