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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?

#161

Post by notatoad »

lumb63 wrote: post #156
crazygringo wrote: post #82

I 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…

Not saying I disagree with you, but couldn’t the “economies of scale” argument be used to justify e.g. all cloud providers forming a monopoly, all hardware manufacturers doing the same, etc.? The only reason all tech companies shouldn’t aspire to monopoly status is to avoid regulators stepping in; they should aim as close as possible.

the main reason that all cloud providers don't form a monopoly is because they can't afford it. if google could buy microsoft or vice versa they totally would. of course they want the monopoly, but that doesn't mean they can have it.

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

#162

Post by EForEndeavour »

echelon wrote: post #155
jeffwask wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the chatgpt garbagisation of the web Eh... it's already started on YouTube. There's a whole new genre of movie content that has chatgpt summarize the movie while they play 15 minutes of clips. It's higher effort garbagisation because someone needs to at least do some low effort video editing.

Full video automation is not going to take long. I'm working on systems to automate 100% of video workflows (in a good way). We recently launched a 24/7 news channel: https://fakeyou.com/news

What do you mean "in a good way"? How do you control whether someone using your video workflow automation uses it for good (whatever that is) or not?

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

#163

Post by scarface_74 »

fisf wrote: post #68
kevincox wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are basically making the case for the anti-trust case here. i.e. it is very hard for another company to compete without "free compute".

That's not how anti-trust works.

Are you really saying that no company should be able to create a new product based on resources it already has?

Why stop at compute? Why not make it an "anti-trust" case that Apple leverages its same operating system and chip design across multiple devices? Or Amazon uses its same logistics network to deliver more than just books?

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

#164

Post by scarface_74 »

Retric wrote: post #148
judge2020 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're making the case for them being a monopoly. Unless Google is preventing others from purchasing compute or hard drives by buying up all of the supply, they are not performing any anti-competitive actions, which would not make them liable under any anti-trust statutes. I don't think anyone's in doubt YT is a monopoly with how big and widely-used it is. It's just that they continue to survive because of how w…

The monopoly practice in this case is subsidizing a business with by leveraging a monopoly. Aka YouTube isn’t paying market prices on unused compute therefore Google is leverage its search monopoly to expand into another business. Historically the concern was that railroads might get into say coal mining by charging competitors more to move coal than they charged themselves.

In that case are you saying it should be illegal for any company to leverage its resources to get into a new business? Should Netflix not been allowed to leverage profits it was making in shipping DVDs to enter streaming?

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

#165

Post by scarface_74 »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #109
judge2020 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they're making the case for them being a monopoly. Unless Google is preventing others from purchasing compute or hard drives by buying up all of the supply, they are not performing any anti-competitive actions, which would not make them liable under any anti-trust statutes. I don't think anyone's in doubt YT is a monopoly with how big and widely-used it is. It's just that they continue to survive because of how w…

Preferentially giving YouTube access to ressources is indeed an anti-competitive action. That’s part of the vertical restraint kind. YT isn’t a monopoly however. It might be dominant depending of how you define the markets but it does have competitors.

That's not in any sense of the word how anti-trust works.

That's just like saying that car manufacturers can't use idle capacity to help start a new line of vehicles just because a new car manufacturer couldn't create a new car line.

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

#166

Post by cm277 »

nindalf wrote: post #115

I respect the Economist’s business columnist (Schumpeter) and tech columnist (Babbage) but this seems to be a case of Schumpeter writing about tech. Leaving aside HN loving the idea of Big Tech being weakened by becoming Relatively Small Tech, I don’t see how this is in Alphabet’s or YouTube’s interest. The article assumes that such a divorce would be simple and it would allow YouTube to focus on taking on TikTok. It…

Well, let's start with the idea of “I wish I could invest in YouTube without investing in the rest of it”. Why not? YouTube is a more focused brand, with a world-beating product that's already active in multiple high-growth verticals (entertainment, shorts/vertical video, education, conspiracy theories). As the article says it can compete against both Netflix and TikTok (and probably Udemy, etc.). Aren't these high-growth areas worth investing in? aren't they more high-growth than whatever Google is doing this week? (I don't know, streaming video games to a watch and a new chat application probably).

And if you are investing in these areas and this is your only business isn't this "focus" all of a sudden important? (so you can actually compete in these businesses and potentially grow the business more?).

I for one like the idea --as well as I think Google needs to be broken up ten years ago. YouTube has scale, a good brand and would probably gain by being less Googley --i.e. iterative and consumer-focused. Not just YouTube, but the internet would be better off with a more focused YouTube (that also has less of your personal data as a bonus).

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

#167

Post by rchaud »

dageshi wrote: post #147
nindalf wrote: post #115

I respect the Economist’s business columnist (Schumpeter) and tech columnist (Babbage) but this seems to be a case of Schumpeter writing about tech. Leaving aside HN loving the idea of Big Tech being weakened by becoming Relatively Small Tech, I don’t see how this is in Alphabet’s or YouTube’s interest. The article assumes that such a divorce would be simple and it would allow YouTube to focus on taking on TikTok. It…

I think more fundamentally, youtube is far less vulnerable to the chatgpt garbagisation of the web. SEO crap is already bad, it will likely get much worse. Youtube has actual good content from creators whose opinions I trust. Google would be moronic to give that up, they've spent long enough building it.

YouTube was the home of AI-generated cartoon videos for kids. Remember the whole uproar about "Elsagate"? That was more than 5 years ago!

When you say "SEO crap", you mean text search. But the world is much bigger than text search today, lots of people use YT as a search engine. Because of that, the "Front Page" of Youtube looks like dumpster fire of the worst clickbait you can imagine.

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

#168

Post by dfinninger »

dageshi wrote: post #147
nindalf wrote: post #115

I respect the Economist’s business columnist (Schumpeter) and tech columnist (Babbage) but this seems to be a case of Schumpeter writing about tech. Leaving aside HN loving the idea of Big Tech being weakened by becoming Relatively Small Tech, I don’t see how this is in Alphabet’s or YouTube’s interest. The article assumes that such a divorce would be simple and it would allow YouTube to focus on taking on TikTok. It…

I think more fundamentally, youtube is far less vulnerable to the chatgpt garbagisation of the web. SEO crap is already bad, it will likely get much worse. Youtube has actual good content from creators whose opinions I trust. Google would be moronic to give that up, they've spent long enough building it.

Well, not really. I follow a few channels that tell interesting true stories over some photos of and around the event. Over the past year or so a few of them have started supplementing with AI, but others have just gone all in. Posts are much more frequent, but the music is AI generated, the pictures are all AI, and the script in an AI expansion of a Wikipedia article. Someone still has to edit it together (for now), but all the content is AI-based. I’ve been unsubscribing since the quality just isn’t there anymore.

Now, this isn’t a problem for the majority of my YouTube consumption, but I’m still seeing it creep in.

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

#169

Post by KMag »

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…

But separating YouTube and GCP into separate companies would presumably cause GCP to expose pricing / scheduling modes that would enable more compute to take advantage of regional downtimes. I'm sure there's plenty of ML training jobs that are just aching for regionally idle compute time.

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

#170

Post by scarface_74 »

throwaway472919 wrote: post #97
ydnaclementine wrote: post #90

It's time for Android to spin off google too. Their new "Did you know google made a PHONE?" commercial feels like terrible marketing. They should market it something like: "Android, powered by Google", and take advantage of the view that google is at least seen as a modern bell labs (by normals at least), so people can get the feeling that smart people are working on android. Otherwise I don't think anyone really kno…

Was a bit surprised it got past the lawyers re:antitrust, it's very heavy on "You already use EVERYTHING Google"

Yes and next anti-trust should break up Microsoft for bundling office and break up the cable companies for bundling cable channels. We should also get rid of BigFastFood because McDonalds bundles hamburgers, fries and a drink...
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