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It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

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Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#2
It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least.

Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up.

Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either way. Spinning off the loser (Facebook), and the non-social networking product (WhatsApp) would let Instagram grow wings against TikTok.

Google: Search, YouTube, ads, and technical infrastructure (cloud) can all easily be separated, and Search and YouTube could likely command an even bigger premium by treating other ad networks as first-class citizens. Google ads could get a lot more business too when they are not tied to other products (those products might compete with yours, driving you away from Google ads).

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#3

It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least. Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up. Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either…

> Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video

And twitch.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#4
This would be the worst time to spin it off. Tiktok is a threat but seems slightly subdued, things might take off for YouTube again.

On ads ATT has depressed revenue a lot but apples recent updates will mean better tracking soon and revenue will recover.

Everything is pointing up for YouTube (and meta), this is the worst time for a change in ownedhip structure. You should do that at the top not the bottom.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#5
post #4

This would be the worst time to spin it off. Tiktok is a threat but seems slightly subdued, things might take off for YouTube again. On ads ATT has depressed revenue a lot but apples recent updates will mean better tracking soon and revenue will recover. Everything is pointing up for YouTube (and meta), this is the worst time for a change in ownedhip structure. You should do that at the top not the bottom.

What are these recent ATT updates ? Does Meta also benefit ?

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#6

It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least. Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up. Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either…

Not combatting the merits of those break-ups, of which I agree, just wanted to point out that WhatsApp is a social media product at this point, because all the relevant social group interactions have moved there from Facebook the website/the app.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#7
I always assumed YouTube’s technical foundations were significantly subsidized by the mothership, but I have no data to base that on other than looking at the $29bn/year revenue figure and wondering whether that amount of money would be enough to provision the amount of compute, storage and bandwidth that YouTube needs, plus all other expenses (including revenue sharing with uploaders). Yes, $29bn is a lot of money, but there is a lot of YouTube.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#8

It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least. Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up. Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either…

I used to support breaking up Meta, Google, and Amazon. Their market positions are pretty dominant, but not unassailable. Facebook barely avoided Snap eating their lunch with stories and now looks to be in a losing position against TikTok. Google vs. LLMs will be interesting to see play out. Amazon… is still in a very strong position.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#9
post #4

This would be the worst time to spin it off. Tiktok is a threat but seems slightly subdued, things might take off for YouTube again. On ads ATT has depressed revenue a lot but apples recent updates will mean better tracking soon and revenue will recover. Everything is pointing up for YouTube (and meta), this is the worst time for a change in ownedhip structure. You should do that at the top not the bottom.

What are these recent ATT updates ? Does Meta also benefit ?

They’re releasing much more data to advertisers, meaning targeting on FB and Meta will considerably improve in the next few months. Which will improve performance for everyone.

Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

#10

It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least. Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up. Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either…

It's unclear to me how making these divisions dramatically increase their infrastructure costs (by either pulling them in-house or paying a premium to the original parent company) will "help them compete"
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