The Google – Youtube – Conundrum

http://blogmaverick.com/2009/06/02/the-google-youtube-conundrum/

by aminuit • 17 years ago

12 10 17 years ago

xsc• 17 years ago

Very infrequent YouTube video poster, but watch a few videos a day.

For myself, I don't have a problem paying for hosting. But I'm sure to use it when it's offered for free.

I'm interested in what Google/YouTube can do for customization, particularly in the chromeless/API arena. I'd definitely pay for HD chromeless at the right price.

andreyf• 17 years ago

They already do that, for sure. The latest example I saw was:

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

litewulf2• 17 years ago

I find this a rather strange article. Flash back in time to before Google was All-About-Ads:

Google can not keep subsidizing its search users! Clearly they work great, but the tech demo is over, and its not as effective at selling their corporate search product as it should be, they need to get out of web search and do X!

Its entirely possible that Google will do something other than "charge users" to make Youtube profitable, since Google pretty much hasn't done that for any of their other products.

aminuit• 17 years ago

YouTube probably costs a small fortune, even in Google terms, to keep running. So I think the question is: how long can they keep running YouTube at a huge loss before shareholders grow unhappy?

litewulf2• 17 years ago

Right. Lets return to my original Google Search analogy. Google Search costs Google a fortune to run, theres all this indexing and bandwidth and serving infrastructure thats just being wasted. Remember at the time most people were looking at Google's enterprise search boxes to be the money bringer.

Sometimes what works is a sideways shift and not "monetize what you're already doing".

zyb09• 17 years ago

They could easily just cut 90% of there 20 gigs upload every minute and absolutly nothing meaningful will be lost.

benmathes2• 17 years ago

I agree that 90% of the stuff on youtube is crap not worth looking at. However, 10% of it is superb. Do you know of an algorithm that can sift the 10% before uploading?

Furthermore, I doubt much bandwidth (youtube->viewer) is wasted on the crap.

ALee• 17 years ago

Man, Mark Cuban and his disdain for YouTube. I don't understand it sometimes.

In general, all of Google's businesses are built to take advantage of large technological trends. Bandwidth will get cheaper and they have found other ways to decrease the cost, e.g. having users click on the HQ/HD button. Fundamentally, Google has always believed that any content out there should eventually be made free because there will be almost no transaction cost with technology. The only way to make money off it is through targeted advertising.

benmathes2• 17 years ago

His disdain for YouTube comes from founding HDNet (www.hd.net), which is his play for where video entertainment will be after television. It's definitely not free.

In other words, he is far from unbiased. He does disclose this in his other blog postings, though, so he's generally not trying to hide anything but instead argue why his solution is better.

steve_mobs• 17 years ago

uploads to youtube are growing at an enormous rate and the more google penetrates into the american and global markets the more the rate will increase. The question is when will broadband get cheap enough to mitigate this? and how long is google willing to cover youtube's cost in the short run until broadband gets cheap enough?

The Google – Youtube – Conundrum

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