241–250 of 348 posts
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?
Fact is: there is very little business sense in an outfit like YouTube. You have massive server costs, massive bandwidth costs, a fickle audience, a precarious copyright situation, and very little margin for recovery.
Yet, YouTube is and remains popular. Very very popular. So, you would think there is some room for a play there. And there have been sufficient suggestions from various parties on what that play should be. Increase advertising. Go full-Spotify. Et cetera, ad absurdum.
What YouTube has implemented is a mediocre mix of worst-case options: sure, customers can get a subscription, but it does not actually offer any advantages. And yes, partners can create opportunities, but only if they're a top-10 media company, and therefore won't create anything if their life literally depended on it. Smaller partners are smothered: Alpha-Goo-tube could listen to them, but they don't and won't.
So, YouTube right now is an entire market-in-itself waiting to be disrupted. Spotify did it for audio; who will be the disruptor for video, and when, remains to be seen. Given the current market conditions, we'll have to wait a year or two, but that YouTube is toast is pretty much a given.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, as you said, google is already stealing your data anyway. Would paying a bit of money every month really make that any worse? But aside from that, it's totally possible to minimize your exposure and still pay for Premium. What I do is have a Google account that is only used for YouTube, paid for through a prepaid debit card, and I only watch YouTube on a single tablet that is not used for any other purpose. It's…
If I give data thieving Google money, I am sending the message that I am OK with their data theft (regardless of going through ridiculous hoops to keep them from stealing it).
YouTube is the last Google service (outside of Android) that I still use. I'll be ditching it as soon as some other service comes reasonably close to being able to replace it for me. That hasn't happened yet, but the day is coming closer.
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No, it’s not comparable in any ways. Car manufacturers sell cars. That’s their main business. Here we have Google using its dominant position in another market to prop up another activity through an advantage. That’s most definitely fall under anti-competitive law at least in Europe (I don’t care about the US. The modern interpretation of American antitrust laws is a complete joke).
Apple's main business was selling computers. Should they not have been allowed to branch out to sell phones or before that music players? Netflix had a dominant business in shipping DVDs to customers. Should they have not branched out to streaming? It's silly to say that companies should never be allowed to branch out to other businesses.
Care to highlight exactly how Netflix used its dominant position in film renting in favour of its streaming business?
It would indeed be silly to say companies can’t branch out. Thankfully no one is so that’s fine.
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'm reminded by calls for Apple to buy Nintendo. It focuses on a very specific upside while ignoring or hand-waving away all the challenges that would likely kill what makes these companies work.
It's complete nonsense and shows the person writing has no idea how that particular business works.
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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.
They have even swapped peoples browsers with security updates before. Though more recent examples like KB 3135173 seem like a simple mistake, it’s more provocative when such things were common.
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…