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It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

economist.com

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

#51

Post by mulletbum »

runako wrote: post #41
madeofpalk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The services may not work a la carte If the service cannot compete on it's own merits, and is being propped up by an unrelated business, how competetive is it actually?

> the service cannot compete on it's own merits This is only true if external actors redefine "the service" to be something other than what millions of customers voluntarily purchase (Prime). For example, I subscribe to Prime because I get free/better shipping on goods as well as video. I don't know what % of my subscription fee I would allot to either, but fortunately I don't have to do that.

Not to mention, these other comments are for Disney. However, Disney is propping their business up with lots of other businesses. If you are going to make Amazon less competitive, you can't leave the giant business next to it in a better position. Disney will just buy it then.

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

#52

Post by Dalewyn »

kryptiskt wrote: post #15
pclmulqdq wrote: post #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…

Privacy will be impossible as long as platform owners are in the ad business so the most important thing for me is to separate Android and Chrome from Google's ad business. For the same reason Apple and Microsoft should be forced to choose between being in the phone/computer or ad business. I don't care too much about Facebook, no doubt they are capable of failing on their own.

I wouldn't even mind ads in Windows, objectively speaking, if Microsoft were to just give it out for free (as in no activation required).

What sucks about Microsoft and ads right now is they sell you a product and then also drown you in ads. Either I pay cold hard cash or they give me ads, but not both; they shouldn't get to double dip.

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

#53

Post by jelling »

kevincox wrote: post #16
jl6 wrote: post #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,…

When I worked at Google I definitely noticed that YouTube was great at (ab)using untracked or very cheap resources. They definitely get huge benifits of otherwise idle data centers in sleeping regions. As the regular service traffic died off YouTube would put those idle cores to work transcoding video. It is definitely the case that YouTube gets lots of really cheap compute by being part of Google. But that isn't a b…

The commentators point was that YouTube may not be as strong of a stand-alone company as the article believes if the COGS is inaccurate because YT gets tons of free resources via Google.

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

#54

Post by pier25 »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17
osigurdson wrote: post #14

For me, YouTube is the most effective ad sponsored service by far. Users are forced to watch at least 5 seconds of ads before watching any content. This 5 second window is very focused as there is no time to context switch to anything else. Contrast this with Google search - sure there are some ads at the top but these are easy to mentally filter out.

Cue uBlock origin - I don’t recall the last time I watched an injected ad on YouTube. Of course most content these days is peddling some product, or has a quick word from sponsors - but at least I don’t have to put up with unrelated ads in the middle of a stream.

And so the creators don't get paid when you watch their content.

I pay for YouTube Premium. Creators get paid and I don't watch ads. We have a family plan so this applies to the whole family.

We spend way more time watching YouTube than Netflix but pay for both.

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

#55

Post by lm28469 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #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…

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

Prime video is what they use to get a foot in the door, then they know you'll want to extract as much value as you can from your prime membership, and that's done by buying shit from amazon

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

#56

Post by mkmk3 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #43
madeofpalk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The services may not work a la carte If the service cannot compete on it's own merits, and is being propped up by an unrelated business, how competetive is it actually?

Also the most obvious split would be AWS and then everything else. What does AWS have to do with Prime?

I'm poorly informed regarding breakups of this kind, and I don't have the experience/research to assess the infra costs of a streaming service like Prime video. Assuming the hosting costs are a significant portion of their expenditure, what would it look like in a breakup, what kind of deal would they be able to get from the newly spun off AWS?

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

#57

Post by runako »

mulletbum wrote: post #51
runako wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the service cannot compete on it's own merits This is only true if external actors redefine "the service" to be something other than what millions of customers voluntarily purchase (Prime). For example, I subscribe to Prime because I get free/better shipping on goods as well as video. I don't know what % of my subscription fee I would allot to either, but fortunately I don't have to do that.

Not to mention, these other comments are for Disney. However, Disney is propping their business up with lots of other businesses. If you are going to make Amazon less competitive, you can't leave the giant business next to it in a better position. Disney will just buy it then.

This is such a great point.

Disney makes a lot of money in theme parks etc.; Walmart makes something like $42B annually in healthcare; Costco sells cars & travel packages; Kroger sells gas (petrol); Apple (also a competitor) makes most of its money selling phones.

Why leave all those businesses intact and target Amazon?

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

#58

Post by sofixa »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #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…

> Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up

That is total nonsense, completely irrelevant, and true.

Conglomerates being worth less than the sum of all parts is one of the stupidest parts of Wall Street. There is no actual rationale for this besides maybe it being easier to evaluate a company doing only a single thing? Specifically with regards to the examples given - Amazon, Meta, Google - it's the cross-subsidising and reuse of stuff that makes them profitable. Prime video without AWS' cache isn't a great competitor to Disney; YouTube on it's own will have a ruinous infrastructure bill that is subsidised by Google now; WhatsApp doesn't make money so can only survive on someone else's dime, etc. etc. Same goes for traditional conglomerates - of course GE were stronger before they split up into three. What will GE Aerospace do next time there's an air travel downturn like a pandemic? Crash and burn unless it has enough reserves, because it won't have the benefit of being propped up by different businesses that aren't impacted (like say GE HealthCare). Bombardier today are in a much worse spot, focusing only on a minuscule and volatile niche (private jets), but at least in their case it wasn't their choice, Boeing bankrupted them with protectionist tricks.

The real reasons to split them up would be to improve competition and the choice of consumers, not because "idiot investors think 'value' will go up".

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

#59

Post by kgwxd »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #17
osigurdson wrote: post #14

For me, YouTube is the most effective ad sponsored service by far. Users are forced to watch at least 5 seconds of ads before watching any content. This 5 second window is very focused as there is no time to context switch to anything else. Contrast this with Google search - sure there are some ads at the top but these are easy to mentally filter out.

Cue uBlock origin - I don’t recall the last time I watched an injected ad on YouTube. Of course most content these days is peddling some product, or has a quick word from sponsors - but at least I don’t have to put up with unrelated ads in the middle of a stream.

Sponsors are the way ads should work. Ads aren't the problem, tracking is.

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

#60

Post by runako »

mkmk3 wrote: post #56
CydeWeys wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the most obvious split would be AWS and then everything else. What does AWS have to do with Prime?

I'm poorly informed regarding breakups of this kind, and I don't have the experience/research to assess the infra costs of a streaming service like Prime video. Assuming the hosting costs are a significant portion of their expenditure, what would it look like in a breakup, what kind of deal would they be able to get from the newly spun off AWS?

> Assuming the hosting costs are a significant portion of their expenditure

I would consider this unlikely, for reasonable definitions of "significant." Costs to license IP and develop content are likely the dominant term in expenses.

> what kind of deal would they be able to get from the newly spun off AWS?

The same as everyone else, or it was a re-org and not a breakup.

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