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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?

#271

Post by danpalmer »

jimnotgym wrote: post #252
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 have no idea about the utility of divesting YouTube but on this point... >YouTube clearly shares a lot of infrastructure with the rest of Google, especially datacenters and ads. I don't see this as a particularly thorny problem. Normally in a divestiture. Newcorp would just sign a 5 year infrastructure deal with Alphabet, and a 5 year deal for it's ad space. That is plenty of time to resolve any lingering issues. I…

The problem is there’s no clear split. Some infra is owned and developed by YouTube teams, some by Google teams, and it’s hard to figure out the balance and usage and so on.

I’m some case you might have a service used by a Google product, operated as a platform by a YouTube team, that uses Google Cloud services, and runs on Google infrastructure. And the SREs may be “paid for” with YouTube budgets. Who pays who? And how much?

It’s not as clean as, say, treating these things all like cloud services provided by an infrastructure provider.

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

#272

Post by qwytw »

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.

Your future sounds pretty dystopian and very lonely though....

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

#273

Post by morpheuskafka »

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".

Actually he is making the counterargument to anti-trust, which is that integration increases efficiency and total surplus.

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

#274

Post by scarface_74 »

saurik wrote: post #270
scarface_74 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And this still has no bearings on the original thing claimed that Microsoft was found to be anti competitive for bundling IE. Not bundling IE was never part of the consent decree. No one ever said there was going to have to be a separate “IE company Inc”.

Job first came back to prominence with the iMac, then really took off because of the iPod. Microsoft didn’t fail in the music player market for lack of trying, they had multiple failures - first Plays4Sure and then the Zune. It was execution failure. The same with the phone.

Microsoft was never able to compete with an integrated player like Apple except for the Mac.

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

#275

Post by scarface_74 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #264
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…

> 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.

The original poster was originally focused on bundling. If DOJ had said Bill Gates kicked a dog while dressing up as clippy it would have meant nothing since there was no proposed remedy or anything that came out of the consent decree that BG had to stop cosplaying as Clippy and kicking dogs.

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

#276

Post by sScTE9qEMCxEk34 »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #273
fisf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Actually he is making the counterargument to anti-trust, which is that integration increases efficiency and total surplus.

90% of the "efficiency" and "surplus" is the fact that no one can effectively compete.

Which is why it's anti-competitive.

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

#277

Post by bloodyplonker22 »

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…

Additionally, it's not quite right when the author compares YouTube to TikTok as direct competitors. I have used YouTube to learn an insanely great amount of new things which range from programming to car and home repairs. You cannot do this on TikTok.

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

#278

Post by ketzo »

cm277 wrote: post #166
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-g…

You're not wrong to say it, but describing conspiracy theories as a "high-growth vertical" kinda makes my stomach hurt

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

#279

Post by Retric »

danielrhodes wrote: post #263
Retric wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Competitive advantage is fine that’s kind of the point of capitalism. So the problem isn’t that YouTube has access to cheap compute, that’s normally just a basic synergy that every MBA loves.

The problem comes from Alphabet having cheap compute left over from their search monopoly. In 1982 AT&T was broken up because it was using its local monopoly when competing in the long distance market. Again for 99% of companies it would have been fine, but monopoly = special rules.

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

#280

Post by Retric »

scarface_74 wrote: post #256
Retric wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It wasn’t always difficult, but at various points there were extra hoops you needed to jump through. Again I will point out Microsoft editing a video to skip steps they clearly wouldn’t have done so if the process was reasonable. 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…

There were never any extra hoops. You downloaded Netscape and you clicked on install like you did any other application.

Not only is this false it was demonstrated as false in court.

“Microsoft later submitted a second inaccurate videotape into evidence. The issue was how easy or difficult it was for America Online users to download and install Netscape Navigator onto a Windows PC. Microsoft's videotape showed the process as being quick and easy, resulting in the Netscape icon appearing on the user's desktop. The government produced its own videotape of the same process, revealing that Microsoft's videotape had conveniently removed a long and complex part of the procedure and that the Netscape icon was not placed on the desktop, requiring a user to search for it. Brad Chase, a Microsoft vice president, verified the government's tape and conceded that Microsoft's own tape was falsified.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

Also I had forgotten about this bit: “Later, Allchin re-ran the demonstration and provided a new videotape, but in so doing Microsoft dropped the claim that Windows is slowed down when IE is removed.”

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