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It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?

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

#261
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why are you continuing to argue when you clearly don't understand antitrust?

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

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why are you continuing to argue when you clearly don't understand antitrust?

Well, in that case neither does the justice department for the last three decades since none of them have agreed with HN lawyers theories...

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

#263
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 capaci…

From reading your comments, it appears like you have confused having a competitive advantage with anti-competitive practices. Just because YouTube has access to cheap resources by its parent does not prevent a competitor from existing in or entering the market. Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok are doing just fine without access to Google's resources. There are other practices that Google does which might fit the bill (e.g. ranking and prominence in search results, Android, etc.), but this isn't one of them.

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

#264
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will say it again Microsoft broke the law and lost. The case was more complicated than a simple sound bite which is why you’re confused. People get away with breaking the law constantly, you can do 57 mph in a 55 every day for 60 years and never get a ticket. Shipping Windows with a copy of IE was like doing 57, nominally illegal but not something they would have gotten in much trouble over. But like a speeder they…

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…

> Nothing came out of the DOJ case with respect to MS bundling IE.

In the sense that there was ultimately a comparative slap on the wrist remedy, in part because of a favorable-to-Microsoft change in administration between the findings of fact on antitrust violation (in which bundling IE was a factor, but far from the sole factor) and the imposition of a remedy for those violations, yes, nothing much came out of it.

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

#265

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

Full video automation has been done for years. There is one infamous channel that automatically scrapes stack overflow posts and makes video versions of the questions.

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if Google hadn't acquired YouTube it wouldn't exist today. It would have either been sued out of existence or the infrastructure costs wouldn't be sustainable. But let's not pretend that the little guy wants to go public. If they do, they are naive. Out of all of the companies, that YC has invested in, maybe 5 have actually gone public. Every startup knows the game is to get acquired. The fact is that some things…

But how did YouTube get founded in the first place, and become successful as a video-sharing platform for original content? Or how did Google come to exist, when the market was dominated by (then-) huge firms like Yahoo, Lycos, and Altavista? Both companies had a first mover advantage by deploying a more scale able technical innovation in a somewhat stealthy way. OpenAI is subsidized as you say, but StabilityAI promp…

> But how did YouTube get founded in the first place, and become successful as a video-sharing platform for original content

A "successful" business makes more than it spends so it can be an ongoing concern. Any company can sell a lot of dollars for 95 cents. Youtube was never a "successful" business with a meaningful revenue stream before being acquired by Google.

> Or how did Google come to exist, when the market was dominated by (then-) huge firms like Yahoo, Lycos, and Altavista?

You realize you're arguing against the need for government regulation. This is the market working as it should. But Google became a success initially because Yahoo used it as their "search engine". Google initially offered to be bought up by Yahoo and Yahoo balked at the price. Google wasn't trying to go it alone.

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did Apple ever had a dominant position in the computer market? Ah, yes, never, I was scared that you may have had a point there for moment. 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.

Netflix very much had a dominant position in DVD rentals at its height. Apple had a dominant position in selling music and in music players by 2006. It was the number one music retailer in the US. It very much used that to get into the phone market and part of its early success in the App Store was that it was built on top of iTunes and it already had more credit cards on file than any other company in the US besides…

> Netflix very much had a dominant position in DVD rentals at its height.

Is this true? My recollection being a netflix DVD customer is that brick and mortar rental stores were dominant until netflix streaming upended the DVD rental dynamic. Would love to see some data on it though!

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

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I just tried to check out your 24/7 news channel and it is currently a twitch stream of a windows desktop wallpaper.

Working now! Pretty dang cool, too.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix very much had a dominant position in DVD rentals at its height. Apple had a dominant position in selling music and in music players by 2006. It was the number one music retailer in the US. It very much used that to get into the phone market and part of its early success in the App Store was that it was built on top of iTunes and it already had more credit cards on file than any other company in the US besides…

> Netflix very much had a dominant position in DVD rentals at its height. Is this true? My recollection being a netflix DVD customer is that brick and mortar rental stores were dominant until netflix streaming upended the DVD rental dynamic. Would love to see some data on it though!

There is a long story about how just when it looked like the combination of BlockBuster brick and mortar + mail in was about to deal the killing blow to Netflix, Carl Icahn came in and snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory.

https://hbr.org/2011/04/how-i-did-it-blockbusters-former-ceo...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/22/how-netflix-almost-lost-the-...

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

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you continuing to argue when you clearly don't understand antitrust?

Well, in that case neither does the justice department for the last three decades since none of them have agreed with HN lawyers theories...

You seem to keep ignoring, though, that Microsoft lost :/. Like: Microsoft was charged, the case was heard, and Microsoft lost. The judge even ruled that Microsoft be broke into two companies! So, no: you are just wasting everyone's time here by insisting something that is 100% absolutely incorrect.

https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/m...

FWIW, the reason you might be a bit confused--though I do not think this excuses the time you're spending here--is that Microsoft did not end up broken into two because they appealed that part of the ruling and "won"... but that court of appeals actually re-affirmed that Microsoft's actions were illegal!

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2582620/appeals-court-...

> The appeals court, in its decision, specifically rejected Jackson's order that Microsoft be split. "We vacate the judgment on remedies, because the trial judge engaged in impermissible ex parte contacts by holding secret interviews with members of the media and made numerous offensive comments about Microsoft officials in public statements outside of the courtroom, giving rise to an appearance of partiality," the decision said in part.

This is essentially akin to someone being convicted of something and then appealing the decision to an appeals court that decides "OK, the defendant clearly is guilty, but the chain of evidence used by the district attorney was compromised and so none of it is admissible; thereby, you cannot send them to jail, even though we know they are guilty".

(edit: Also, there were, in fact, serious ramifications on Microsoft for this loss... Bill Gates largely had to step down as CEO due to having gotten the courts so mad at Microsoft that it was almost broken apart, the IE team had a difficult time hiring anyone due to the shame and Internet Explorer ended up on life support https://vimeo.com/310654342

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