Start with spinning off Shorts into a separate tab and I'm happy.
It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
121–130 of 348 posts
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#122> I always assumed YouTube’s technical foundations were significantly subsidized by the mothership, but I have no data to base that on
I'd venture to guess that YouTube provided more value than just their customer base. I often wonder how much of their tech stack made it into the larger Google org.
Example; for the longest time when you'd log into gsuite via a SAML IdP you'd notice a youtube url in the login flow.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#123I 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,…
This was my first thought as well. Is YouTube viable as its own company at the scale it operates? I have to imagine the infrastructure costs for YouTube would be extremely high and would likely cause YouTube to downgrade quality or try even harder to put a subscription behind even 1080. Now obviously contacts can be signed and I highly doubt they would be paying normal prices in any cloud environment given this hypot…
Yep.
Does YT need Google's backing in order to survive because they don't have the resources strictly in-house to build and pay for infrastructure?
Disclaimer: Not an Economist, not even close.
If in the unlikely case they spun it off and another competitor emerged, would YT's scale make it hard to compete with this new entrant? Read: Red tape, bureaucracy, etc, etc.
Essentially back to where they were as an independent company when they didn't have Google to "protect" them...
The inverse case is what usually comes to mind first though:
Would the company wither and die if not for an acquisition? Think about Sprint+TMobile. Until the deal, Sprint was in bad shape, second to Verizon with outdated tech - in the sense that emerging technologies were based more off of an evolution of GSM than CDMA.
If TMo doesn't acquire them, Sprint probably goes "poof" and their customers flee to the remaining carriers, further entrenching their positions.
This seems like it is usually the card European regulators tend to play, worrying more about market dynamics and how that will affect costs rather than just what people pay for service.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
These hypothetical splits show the perils of having outsiders (including regulators) make decisions like these. Just some quick notes: > You don't need the retail arm any more [...] spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor The whole point of the conglomerate model they use (following Costco) is that the membership fee grants consumers access to a bevy of services. Th…
> 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?
I’m a long time paid subscriber to both Amazon Prime and Costco, and I can’t say I’ve ever thought of the services as particularly similar. Maybe that’s because I rarely use Costco to buy things online (I’ve only ordered a few online-only items and one travel package), which is the primary way I use Prime.
Prime certainly feels more like a bundle of unrelated things, with the streaming service, and cloud music/photos/ebooks/etc. stuff no one uses, and whatever Twitch benefits they have now. I guess Costco might actually have some stuff like that, but I’m not aware of anything other than warehouse access, some online shipping benefits, and the travel/car/“Next” shopping.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's not like there will be a free competitor in any case? The closest might be peertube but that's nowhere near as reliable. Vimeo is paid. None of the other big companies seem willing to subsidize an online video service to the tune of tens of billions per annum.
Which, again, makes the anti-trust case stronger. The case being: Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), and it's so effective that they have driven all competitors out of the market. By nearly any standard, Google's control of YouTube should be a prime anti-trust target.
Being a monopoly isn’t illegal, abusing your monopoly is.
And how does “providing compute” even matter, YouTube is just using google servers like every other google service. Not like they’re getting something for free because they’re part of the same company.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> And so the creators don't get paid when you watch their content.
They could ask the users to pay for the content they produce and measure how many microseconds would pass before they switch to someone else's videos.
It's an option.
I don't want to watch ads, I skip sponsored sections, I feel no guilt about it, if they can't monetize enough and have to shutdown operations, I can survive without that content.
What would you say if I was dancing in the middle of the streets asking for money and blaming people who don't give any because "I am not being paid for the show I've put up, you ingrates!"?
Nobody asked or forced content creators to upload their content on YT.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#127I can't agree. Ultimately, the article argues for spinoff because of 1) focus, 2) more subscription experimentation, and 3) regulators. But there's zero evidence YouTube is a distraction, it's already done lots of experimenation with subscriptions, and YouTube seems like the last of regulators' concerns with Alphabet. I do think it's true there isn't a whole lot of strategic synergy between YouTube and Google or the…
The two companies would likely have more total value separate than together. The stock market doesn't price conglomerates correctly.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
One time while working at Google, someone sent me an email linking to a video file related to our work. Before I could watch the video, I had to watch an ad of a unicorn pooping and then a man eating it. I was quite repulsed and livid about it.
Ahh, you mean the original Squatty Potty ads:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YbYWhdLO43Q
It's definitely bizarre. I assume they were going for memorable, but your report sounds like it failed at the basic goal: remembering the product.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#129YouTube has become horrible experience practically unwatchable unless you pay for the monthly Premium service. And this is coming from me a person who grew up watching TV stuffed with ads. I can't imagine with young people who never watched TV think of bare non-premium YouTube. Non-premium YouTube is just an ad machine that happens to show some video content between ads. It used to be the opposite of that.
So pay for premium then. It costs a lot of money to run, why do you feel entitled to get it for free with nothing monetizing it?
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's not like there will be a free competitor in any case? The closest might be peertube but that's nowhere near as reliable. Vimeo is paid. None of the other big companies seem willing to subsidize an online video service to the tune of tens of billions per annum.
Which, again, makes the anti-trust case stronger. The case being: Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube), and it's so effective that they have driven all competitors out of the market. By nearly any standard, Google's control of YouTube should be a prime anti-trust target.
> Google leverages one of their businesses (providing compute) to build an anti-competitive moat around another of their businesses (youtube),
You speak as if providing compute is their primary business. Youtube, existed long before their compute. They already had all their own compute. They only got into providing compute because they figured they could beat AWS with their own infrastructure.