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Comment by privateSFacct | Hacker News Reader

This article should say - you can't compete with google using google.

The "final blow" was adsense being cutoff. Their revenue model to compete with google was ... adsense. OK.

Their traffic model was google search. Ok.

Between the lines it sounds like some aggressive SEO, and maybe the network click bounce thing (you click on one video, and then it clicks through to another site etc). Be curious what their content moderation story was.

Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add.

The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive. I do think there will be a youtube alternative (small scale) eventually.

The problem is a lot of these "competitors" get filled with absolutely trash / hateful content right away because the first people to use them are the rejects from youtube and the moderation teams are so glad to have someone show up they don't moderate heavily enough. Checkout some of the reddit competitors, total disgusting trash.

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>The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive

It's really not any different than what Netflix is doing now, right?

Discounting SEO, the major issue was that they didn't build their own ad network. You set up business in Google's front yard and didn't like it when they told you to get out.

The ad network (or rather the monetization model) is the hardest part of building a video sharing site. If that part wasn't figured out then it's hard for me to believe you were actually serious about building a content network.

Given how much this guy cried about how much money he is "owed" I'm less likely to believe he was slighted and more likely to believe he was a greedy exec who was in over his head.

From the article:

> he walked away with about $50 million when News Corp purchased my space. He should have walked away with a lot more

He thinks that News Corp should have paid more for myspace? Because they got so much value from it.

It does seem a bit out of proportion, News Corp bought a business that proceeded to sink.

I think Peertube and other Fediverse stacks like Mastodon, Pleroma, Pixelfed & Lemmy will continue to bleed users from more traditional sites over the next few years. They've significantly lowered the barriers to running your own social site, creating a great variety of communities that otherwise would be much smaller or non-existent.

Yes, MySpace wasn't making any money if I recall and so had no real business plan. Sounds like the same like the guy complaining. They don't have real business plans to make money except an exit strategy to sell it to someone else. Their revenue was going to come from adsense? And he's complaining about google cutting him off. He should have been thinking how to make money, like his own adsense.

Why don't you think that the hardest part is acquiring the viewers? At least nowadays, network traffic is cheap. You get 1TB for 1 euro [0]. You need 22 Mbps for 1080HD [1], which means you can stream 100 hours for 1 euro.

If you stream 5min clips, that's 1200 clips for 1 euro. There should be enough ad networks that offer 2 euro CPM to make a profit.

On the other hand, how can they make a profit if nobody is discovering their site?

[0] https://hetzner.de

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/434532/what-data-transfer-ra...

When you flip that on its head those rates actually seem pretty nightmarish when trying to compete with YouTube.

1200 views for 1 euro, that's 1000 eur for a million views. On top of that YouTube's rates of paying creators are in the same ballpark at 1k/million views.

So yeah your ad model needs be paying 2k+ per million views ( any one more familiar with the ad industry know the real value made curiously? ) on a video or your screwed

>At least nowadays, network traffic is cheap.

But it's not. Your example is contrived, as Hetzner likely doesn't expect you to stream a 100 hours of 1080p HD content to 100 people simultaneously. Your users would have a laughably bad experience at scale. On a single box, it's unlikely you could max out your throughput - you could at most support 45 users on a single Hetzner node (1080p @ 22Mbps on a Gigabit connection in the best case).

If you are going to be serving content with any level of seriousness you need a CDN. 1TB of bandwidth on Cloudfront costs $87. Akamai charges $100-$150. Thats 100x than 1 euro/TB you initially priced out.

1TiB of CDN egress at market rate for large customers is less than a cup of coffee

Which you'd not be if you were just starting out. The cost also won't come down 90% no matter who you are. Big streaming networks often have to build their own to compete.

Akamai? Really. Either way, most of the ad revenue tends to come from the United States; the CDN is far from a requirement.

How would you build a video streaming service without a CDN? A CDN doesn't just solve the content distribution problem - it also solves the bandwidth problem.

With a 1Gig connection you can only serve ~45 concurrents streaming 1080p. If you wanted to support more than 45 concurrents, you would need

1. To distribute content to separate instances

2. A routing infrastructure to reliably route connections to that content.

And then, congrats, you have just built your own CDN - albeit in one datacenter. If you don't want your users on the other side of the country constantly complaining that your site is slow compared to Vimeo, you would have to build it on the other side as well.

If you believe your hodgepodge CDN is going to be much cheaper than Cloudfront (on the order of 1 Euro/month, where you could support it on ~1.5M views/month), then you should probably skip the whole video sharing nonsense, and get rich becoming a CDN provider :)

My point is, you don't need an expensive global CDN if your end goal is to optimize for ad-revenue within the U.S market. I don't know why you stuck on the CDN, and it sounds like you are using it as a hammer to achieve scalability.

I'm stuck on the CDN because you need something like a CDN to serve any meaningful number of concurrents. The numbers I quoted for cloudfront were for the US.

If you believe otherwise, please enlighten me on how you can build a HD video streaming service for 100 concurrents without a CDN. Like I mentioned, on a 1GbE connection, you can serve a theoretical max of 45 users on one node. Where do you go from there without something that looks like CDN?

And yet, by all accounts and signals, Youtube wasn't profitable for a decade and reportedly barely manages to break even today with a billion users.

Do you have a source for this? YouTube isn't broken out separately in Alphabet earning reports and the last anyone authoritative talked about YouTube finances this way was several years ago AFAICT.

There are no hard sources other than "Susan said they weren't profitable" back in 2016.

https://fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-profits-ceo-susan-woj...

By "all accounts and signals", I mean it's basically rumored that Youtube was only barely able to break even with a billion users, which was the target set to make it profitable: https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f...

Nothing you said is wrong, but that is part of the problem right? To do anything online, you have to use google to some extent, so how can you compete in the first place? Google is already a monopoly in search which makes it impossible to make something online that requires search (ie., almost everything) and have it properly compete.

Hey, if you want to compete with Standard Oil just build your own railroad line.

Until Standard Oil builds pipelines.

That literally happened.

Exactly. You may as well try to compete with a railroad monopoly while at the same time not using any of their existing rail infrastructure. Good fucking luck.

Pornhub probably could. They've got the tech, the traffic, the money, the advertising infrastructure, they've got everything they need to launch a youtube competitor because the big tech companies don't really touch porn.

> "the big tech companies don't really touch porn."

Isn't that the case because mainstream American advertisers don't want anything to do with it? I don't think it's a matter of west coast tech companies being prudes, but rather tech companies appeasing big consumer goods companies that spend billions on advertising, like P&G, J&J, PepsiCo, etc. And those companies are in turn likely appeasing 'middle america' by trying to keep their brands as bland and "family friendly" as possible.

Edit: (And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Amazon sells pornography, so that's one of the big tech companies at least that is willing to. And I don't think it's a coincidence that advertising from those big consumer goods companies isn't nearly as important to Amazon... Then again Amazon doesn't allow nudity on twitch, which perhaps could be considered roughly analogous to Google's similar ban of pornography on youtube. Perhaps twitch, as a consumer brand, is subject to the same social pressures from the American public as PepsiCo?)

Anyone else find it mildly strange how such a huge portion of the economy functions solely on the production and consumption of terrible products such as soda?

I'm more worried about the huge supporting portion of the economy that is advertising. Seems to have much more harmful effects on everything around us, including but not limited to making people consume more terrible products such as soda than they otherwise would.

Sugar and caffeine, it's addictive twice over.

Although that also describes another beverage, coffee. The difference between the coffee and soft drink industries is interesting though. Two massive corporations dominate almost the entire soft drink industry, with a handful of minor providers (notably Keurig Dr Pepper) and a long tail of much smaller 'boutique', novelty, or regional brands. Comparatively, no coffee company controls as much of the industry as either the Coca Cola Company or PepsiCo do.

(Also, PepsiCo in particular owns a ton of other non-beverage brands. Their subsidiary Frito-Lay produces the brands Lay's, Cheetos, Doritos, etc. PepsiCo is huge for American consumers. To your point though, snack food isn't much better than sugar water.)

Pop isn’t a terrible product. The issue, like anything, is overuse.

You can make the same argument for anything, from butter to guns to video games to literally anything that plugs into the wall and consumes electricity.

Use anything beyond reason and it becomes destructive.

Amazon does sell porn, but it's excluded from recommendations and casual browsing I believe. If you search by keyword you'll get results.

> And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure Amazon sells pornography, so that's one of the big tech companies at least that is willing to.

Amazon also runs an entirely separate and special cloud staffed only by US citizens to assist the military in running software that decides who to detain, torture, and possibly murder, so it is unsurprising that they have no corresponding aversion to media depicting less violent interactions.

Not quite.

First, Google isn't a monopoly on search. Popular? yes. Best product? For most use cases, yeah. The fact that the search competition is a click away makes it dominant in the market but not a monopoly or monopsony.

Second, companies are doing fine in this regard by bypassing Google. There are online businesses that exist solely on Amazon and Instagram. Building out a strong social presence is one way to get traffic without relying on Google search. Several major content hosting sites (images/gifs) have taken off in part because of their social saturation.

Is it easy? No, but to GP's point it doesn't sound like they were being strategic in this regard either.

I should rephrase my argument. What I really meant to highlight is you cannot have a business online that google does not approve of without great difficulty, given to be online you must use google in some extent. That is a problem and decidedly anti-competitive.

Also I don't care too much about the OP's attitude or lack of strategy, actors don't have to be paragons of virtue in order to be wronged and their situation be an example of a larger problem.

Also, finally, why do you need to dispute the basic facts, no one in their right mind thinks Google isn't a monopoly on search, I think that is more or less an established fact at this point.

> What I really meant to highlight is you cannot have a business online that google does not approve of without great difficulty

I disagree. I have worked at several companies with very successful sales and marketing departments where referrals from google were a noticeable but ultimately unimportant part of the revenue picture. I have also worked at a place that literally lived and died by the grace of a top ranking on google, once we hit the 2nd and then 3rd page, the business was basically dead. This sucked, but it was very nice for the company that replaced us. There is no inherent reason why one company should be entitled to the slot any more than any other (besides the google algorithm that determines ranking).

> no one in their right mind thinks Google isn't a monopoly on search, I think that is more or less an established fact at this point.

"A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity" [0]. Bing exists so by definition, you are wrong.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

There is probably choice from an end-user's point of view, yes. On that front you are arguing about best search results.

But as site owner, you need traffic. SEO for some search engine built by your brother, used exclusively by your family, wont help you grow your business. You need eyeballs, and more than 90% of those are on google [0]. Pretending this is a perfectly functioning market and websites can just ignore google is... unrealistic.

[0] http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share

It's definitely not a perfectly competitive market but this trope about GAFAM being monopolies is tiring. A monopoly can stagnate development on their product, raise prices and there's nothing customers can do because they have literally no other option. That is why monopolies are bad.

If Google were to try and charge users for search, everyone would immediately switch to bing which keeps them in check from raising prices like they would if they were the only provider of search. They are in no way a monopoly.

The pedantry around the term "monopoly" is also a bit tiring.

If you substitute "harmfully disproportionate market power" for "monopoly", the points most people are making remain similar.

Are you suggesting that we should ignore people misusing economic terms when discussing economic policy? I don't see how ignoring blatantly false facts is better than educating people such that they can properly discuss a topic using the proper terms.

For a proper exchange of ideas to function, the listening side has to try it's best to interpret the message as intended. Yes, to a degree does that include ignoring misuse of language. That obviously doesn't mean you can never give any feedback.

> educating people such that they can properly discuss a topic using the proper terms

Where did you do that? The only recommendation for a better term I see is "harmfully disproportionate market power", still quite a usable mouthful and made by someone else. Your contribution seems to boil down to "your wrong", and I'm still unsure if this is intended to be about the use of the word or the actual point. Probably both, with one being secretly used to support the other.

His point is that Google isn't a monopoly from the user side. What if Google started offering the ability for websites to pay to increase their pagerank?

Not if the "charge for search" is actually paid by the website. Google is indirectly charging the users

Google -> search results (for free) -> website (owner paid for seo/adwords and charge the customer)

Similar thing happened with google maps while they were never a monopoly by your definition because other solutions exist.

If you have a problem with people using the word monopoly as synonymous with anti-trust then just interpret it as anti-trust and ignore the word.

For example, Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning:

Any abuse by one or more undertakings of a dominant position within the internal market or in a substantial part of it shall be prohibited as incompatible with the internal market in so far as it may affect trade between Member States. Such abuse may, in particular, consist in: (a) directly or indirectly imposing unfair purchase or selling prices or other unfair trading conditions; (b) limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers;

With Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 we get supreme court cases that states things like: The purpose of the [Sherman] Act is not to protect businesses from the working of the market; it is to protect the public from the failure of the market. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, but against conduct which unfairly tends to destroy competition itself.

And in an other supreme court case:

The goal was to prevent restraints of free competition in business and commercial transactions which tended to restrict production, raise prices, or otherwise control the market to the detriment of purchasers or consumers of goods and services, all of which had come to be regarded as a special form of public injury. For that reason the phrase "restraint of trade," which, as will presently appear, had a well understood meaning in common law, was made the means of defining the activities prohibited.

Not a word about monopoly but a lot about behavior which in common speech people call monopoly but actually refer to behavior which is illegal according to anti-trust.

Even so, by the definitions you're copying, Google's competition is still a click away for consumers.

Whether you use anti-trust synonymously with the word monopoly doesn't change the fact that Google will still show Bing and Yandex in the search results.

An example of anti-competitive behavior here is actually from Amazon, when they had de-listed Apple TV and Chromecast from their marketplace for years because it competed with their Fire Stick.

> If you have a problem with people using the word monopoly as synonymous with anti-trust then just interpret it as anti-trust and ignore the word.

> Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense.

That's kind of the point. Using Monopoly power in one industry (advertisement or search) to cripple a competitor in another (video) is kind of the definition of anti-competitive behavior.

This is why people want Alphabet to be split up. Google is leveraging their monopoly position in online advertising to benefit their monopoly position in online video, as well as their monopoly position in online search.

> The paying of creators definitely anti-competitive.

Its actually very common practice and has been for a very long time (way before 2007). Once people get mindshare, they get offers. The top you tubers, twitch streamers, etc have negotiated contracts with terms that are very different that what a standard creator has.

Think of it just like Hollywood. The top talents are sough after and franchises are built around them, the rest have to audition.

You have your timeline mixed up. First they were dependent on Google. Then Google started competing. Then they were cut off.

Haven’t used reddit in over a year and hardly visit YouTube. #1 competitor for my time is reading a book. The freedom and clarity I feel now that I’m not plugged in to these types of social networks makes me believe reddit is also “disgusting trash”.

I also am trying to read more books and unplug, but Reddit isn’t so bad if you find good sub-Reddit’s. The main site and default sub-Reddit’s are definitely trash, though.

The same is true of YouTube if you heavily scrutinize your subscription list.

It’s extremely annoying because there are pockets of communities that remind me of the Internet before the masses trashed it and everything was centralized around a handful of sites. I’ve been playing with Mastodon lately and that reminds me more of the 90s Internet.

What's the problem with YouTube?

If I'm interested in a subject / person, I try to both read about it and listen video about it / from him. I found that the two information sources are often complementary.

You are painting with a very broad brush. There are tens of thousands of subreddits covering a dizzying array of topics. Many are low information garbage communities, but many are amazing resources that can't be found anywhere else.

I'm not suggesting you change your personal choice, but as someone who is a sometimes member of those communities, I resent being called trash.

Book publishers let white nationalists, pedophiles, sex offenders, and others publish books. Books don't even have age gated ratings, so parents don't even have any idea what kind of content their children are consuming when they read a book. If you want disgusting trash, pick up 'In Defense of Elitism' sometime. It's the only book I have destroyed after reading several chapters.

When you paint a medium or platform with a broad brush, and chastise them for not censoring it to your liking, you should at least check the alternative you're recommending is at least as censorial.

So I was looking at old blog posts about LiveVideo and saw a reference to a rumor that LiveVideo paid off creators to cause the initial jump from Youtube to LiveVideo. There might have been a lot of shady dealings on both sides, but it was so long ago someone from each side should be able to do a tell all with the actual details. http://willvideoforfood.com/2007/02/07/livevideo-vs-youtube-...

Sort of hard to avoid google when they control 90% ads traffic.

> Seriously, if you are building a google competitor, you probably need to use something other than adsense. And a reminder, adsense is a key revenue generation value add.

OK but this story begins in 2006. At that time there basically was only Google for generating significant traffic. Facebook was growing and Twitter had just launched but neither had the size of audience (or real ad products) to generate the type of traffic Google could

I am assuming you are implying that a human in google made the decision to bury competition search results and deny the competition’s AdWords relationship and not benign factors like bad SEO or misbehaving website

Google has been stung and made to show search results in an unbiased way with relation to their products. While it happened in the past the current monopoly, anticompetitive, antitrust commission in Europe California and some awaking Asian countries prevent that kind of behavior

That is the crux of antitrust/monopoly protection commission. The reason the exist

>Checkout some of the reddit competitors, total disgusting trash.

These people where on reddit up until recently you just never visited the subs that got banned. It took some loud squealing to make the admins do something, then the result was way worse. It made the "disgusting trash sites" and the people that use them more vigilant that why none are really growing.

Reddit has also changed how it wants it's users to use the site. Previously users would subscribe to a collection of subreddits and have a feed of them.

Then a bunch of subreddits got banned and more quarantined. They labelled those who subscribed to a quarantined as a "community" and not just something you subbed to.

Now any subreddit you "join" and "leave" and they have dropped the subscribe/unsubscribe wording further enforcing the isolated community angle of invested enthusiasts rather than the casual subscriber to random things. Now if you subscribe to some random subreddit you can be viewed as agreeing with all its postings and viewpoints where previously people wouldn't think this way about using the site.

Things won't grow as they are aopealing to the hardcore focus users rather than the casual ones. Any competition would do well to appeal to the more casual and disconnected users.

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