Doesn't youtube need a lot of bandwidth which if you separated into two different companies would get much more expensive (both for yt and the rest)?
It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
321–330 of 348 posts
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#322It's time for antitrust to hit Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon. At the very least. Amazon: AWS is one of the most valuable businesses ever created. You don't need the retail arm any more, now that it is enshitting itself. Also spin off the media company, comprising Audible and prime video, to make a Disney competitor. Amazon would absolutely be more valuable broken up. Meta: Meta has always run 3 separate products either…
“Search, YouTube, ads, and technical infrastructure (cloud) can all easily be separated”
At a product-level view from 10,000 feet, it might seem this way. In reality, these are deeply interconnected systems that are 15-20 years in the making. “Easily separated” are the last words I’d use.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
That 27% rate would be illegally high in most countries. Not to mention the many places which have high-quality public broadcasters with few or no ads. That said network TV isn't necessarily a great comparison. For me I'm most likely to compare with YouTube of the past, very similar content, but no ads. Or YouTube with adblock or third-party android apps.
Well the parent commenter was talking about network TV (and basic cable isn't any different) and YouTube is an American company. So that's great if 27% ad time is illegal in some other countries, but I guess they either make it up with mandatory fees (like in the UK) or have lower budget programming.
Bad guess, try again
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#324The Economist - I don't know what their actual thinking is behind this, but as usual they should probably rename themselves to The Marxist. On this occasion though, most comments seem to be in agreement against The Economist.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The services may not work a la carte If the service cannot compete on it's own merits, and is being propped up by an unrelated business, how competetive is it actually?
It's not so much being propped up, as at achieving better efficiencies. Leveraging the larger organizations compute resources and ads technology makes Youtube more valuable than a stand alone company would be, for example.
This isn't always true. A conglomerate isn't always more efficient than separated entities.
You wouldn't get magical efficiencies by combining an oil company with an airline, for example, even though oil is a key cost component of air travel.
The same goes for compute resources and ad sales - both are roughly commodity services with lots of competitors. Youtube gets some efficiencies from vertical integration with both, due to incentive alignment, but also gets a lot of inefficiencies from the added complexity and management and the need to keep up with competitors in the commodity part of the business, which can be expensive.
The semiconductor industry is a place where you would think you would see an obvious efficiency to vertical integration - designing your process technology specifically for your chips. In practice, vertical integration between the chip design and manufacturing sides is almost gone, with a few notable exceptions. This is because it is actually not more efficient to be integrated.
Technical infrastructure seems to be similar to me.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the service cannot compete on it's own merits This is only true if external actors redefine "the service" to be something other than what millions of customers voluntarily purchase (Prime). For example, I subscribe to Prime because I get free/better shipping on goods as well as video. I don't know what % of my subscription fee I would allot to either, but fortunately I don't have to do that.
Not to mention, these other comments are for Disney. However, Disney is propping their business up with lots of other businesses. If you are going to make Amazon less competitive, you can't leave the giant business next to it in a better position. Disney will just buy it then.
Disney's business lines are pretty synergistic. You have a media company, at its core, that provides other entertainment (theme parks) related to its IP, sells merchandise, and runs 3 different online distribution platforms for the media companies.
The Disney corporation is built around exploiting the rights to these media IPs to the fullest.
In contrast, Amazon is the online version of Walmart that can also sell you computing time and makes feature films which are just a perk of their "fast shipping" club.
There's a pretty clear distinction here, even with one of the other mega-conglamerates (disney) that probably owns too many different content production units.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just as a point of interest, AIUI the names "Schumpeter" and "Babbage" are "house names", not the real names of the people who write the columns. Any given column might be written by anyone, and it would still use the same house name. Shumpeter and Babbage are the last names of famous people in fields related to the columns topics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely is another interesting example, however in this case, Mark Stephens actually took over the pseudonym after he left InfoWorld: After a financial disagreement in 1995, Stephens was dismissed from InfoWorld and was promptly sued by IDG to prevent him from continuing to use the Cringely trademark. A settlement was reached out of court that allowed him to use the name, so l…
That's not just a guy's name? Was I confusing him with Robert Scoble the whole time?
…Robert Scoble was accused of sexual assault and later converted to Islam?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Scoble
I'm learning so much from Wikipedia today.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those synthetic voices drive me insane. Nothing makes me stop watching a video faster.
The TikTok woman voice is so grating it's oddly fascinating. It might be the most annoying voice I've ever heard but yet... edit: TIL it's a real person and she (can) sound exactly like the TTS version... I'm cracking up listening to her. Thank goodness it's something she can turn on and off.
Her second video makes it clearest that it's her voice that really is that chirpy :)
https://www.tiktok.com/@voiceofkat/video/7157105733128015109
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you considered a career in subsistence farming? You're likely to be less damaging to the world.
I'm a filmmaker and love the arts more than you'll know. You're being incredibly sour, and I guarantee you that acting the way you do toward other humans (and yourself) subtracts way more from the universe. I feel sorry for you.
GP was rude & out of turn, but there's no need to be patronizing like that. You're engaging in the same behavior you're criticizing them for, putting toxicity into the community/universe.
Re: It’s time for Alphabet to spin off YouTube?
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Think about all of the great ideas that wither on the vine because the Hollywood studio system only has so much capital and can only back so many projects. Very few; great ideas mostly happen outside of the Hollywood studio system, which is largely about expensive packaging of low-risk ideas, not great ones.
> Very few Allow me to point to the thousands of creatives trying to cut it that cannot break in. I've met perhaps over a hundred of them personally. I, myself, am one of these people. > which is largely about expensive packaging of low-risk ideas, not great ones. The market serves different segments and there's a lot of intelligence built around vehicles of all types, shapes, and sizes. I don't think Hollywood is st…
Why focus so much on getting into Hollywood?
In my opinion it's the McDonald's of movies. Not particularly good, always the same few usual suspects on the menu, nothing adventurous but mindless consumerism. And a few people get rich off it. It's business, not art. But people use it in masses because it's easy to get and they know what they're getting. Some excellent stuff comes out of there too but it almost feels like an accident sometimes.
If you're really into your art form, I wouldn't even try to get in there. Sure, alternative cinema won't make you rich. But if that's your goal you're in the wrong business anyway. Making it in Hollywood is more about who you know and who you f*k than about your skills.