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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?

#231

Post by ok_dad »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #172
cm277 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-g…

> Well, let's start with the idea of “I wish I could invest in YouTube without investing in the rest of it”. Why not? The preceding parts of the comment literally explain why not.

"Because it's hard" is no answer.

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

#232

Post by giantrobot »

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.

> Aka YouTube isn’t paying market prices on unused compute therefore Google is leverage its search monopoly to expand into another business.

What in the hell is "market rate" for compute? Google bought a zillion CPUs and hard drives and put them in data centers that they pay for. There's no "market rate", they own the infrastructure. They can do whatever they want with the equipment they own. A division using another division's spare compute capacity isn't in any way an anti-trust violation. What you're saying makes no sense at all.

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

#233

Post by duxup »

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…

This reminds me of what I see happen in sports sometimes.

Fans decide it is time to trade Player X. Next move is to find someone to replace them ... they then describe someone just like Player X.

A YouTube and Google split would setup a situation where they both seem to be a pretty good fit for each other.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

echelon wrote: post #218
91bananas wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the rest of us don't.

"ought to be enough for anybody" If things stay the same as ever, this life will have been boring. I'm not cut out for another twenty years of smartphone incrementalism. Fuck the status quo. I don't live for "same". Everything in the world as it exists isn't enough. The future could be the most exciting thing if we dream and build it.

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by Retric »

giantrobot wrote: post #232
Retric wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Aka YouTube isn’t paying market prices on unused compute therefore Google is leverage its search monopoly to expand into another business. What in the hell is "market rate" for compute? Google bought a zillion CPUs and hard drives and put them in data centers that they pay for. There's no "market rate", they own the infrastructure. They can do whatever they want with the equipment they own. A division using another…

Google cloud exists... Anyway, monopolies have specific legal restrictions on what they can do with their infrastructure be that railroads, cables, or data centers.

“Amazon EC2 Spot Instances let you take advantage of unused EC2 capacity in the AWS cloud. Spot Instances are available at up to a 90% discount compared to On-Demand prices.” https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot/

As a monopoly Google could sell the same capacity YouTube is using on Google cloud services and YouTube could then buy that capacity. If YouTube was treated as any other customer it’s fine, if YouTube got preferential treatment it’s not fine.

I doubt anyone is going to take them to court over this but it is likely illegal.

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

#236

Post by scarface_74 »

Retric wrote: post #222
scarface_74 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was your original thesis: > Microsoft for example could have spent unlimited money on IE and the justice department wouldn’t have cared as long as it was treated as a business investment. However, leveraging the ability to change windows was seen as problematic. There is no confusion. Nothing came out of the DOJ case with respect to MS bundling IE . Intel has never had a monopoly when it came to x86. IBM insiste…

I said “leveraging the ability to change windows” which is not limited to bundling. Making it more difficult to install competitors is “leveraging the ability to change windows.” They very much lost in large part because of a video shown in court of how difficult to install a competitor. They even lied about it by editing their own video which skipped steps showing they knew that behavior was problematic. As to Intel…

Did you ever install Navigator back in the day? It was not difficult to install another browser.

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

#237

Post by rottingchris »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #202
scarface_74 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simple Managerial Accounting 101. Every major company operates the same way. When Disney+ "buys" the right to stream the latest Marvel movie from Marvel Studios, the company as a whole has to back out the revenue so not to count it twice. But still show Disney+'s profit.

Why would they have to “back out” revenue”? Revenue for one department has to be an expense for another if they are buying and selling from each other, and that would cancel out in the company wide financials. Disney+ buying from or selling to Marvel would not show up as profit or loss for Disney.

Revenue is independent of expenses. It cancels out when you calculate profit.

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

#238

Post by ghaff »

tshaddox wrote: post #228
ghaff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one uses Kindle ebooks? People may not read books as much as they used to and many still read physical books but lots of people use ebooks.

I meant "Prime Reading": https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/fd/prime-pr But I could be wrong about it being rarely used.

I had forgotten about Prime Reading. It looks a lot like the free digital services a lot of libraries have--not really a whole lot of quality content.

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

#239

Post by scarface_74 »

rottingchris wrote: post #237
lotsofpulp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they have to “back out” revenue”? Revenue for one department has to be an expense for another if they are buying and selling from each other, and that would cancel out in the company wide financials. Disney+ buying from or selling to Marvel would not show up as profit or loss for Disney.

Revenue is independent of expenses. It cancels out when you calculate profit.

I spoke about "revenue" and then I said "profit". I was inconsistent. "Profit" would have been cancelled out. "Revenue" would have had to be backed out.

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

#240

Post by jonas-w »

whalesalad wrote: post #197

judging by the way 9 times out of 10 the callback url for a google oauth login is to a youtube domain, i'm going to sarcastically assume that this is architecturally impossible

Where does this number come from? Is this just a made up number, or is this a real statistic?
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