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Comment by rory096 | Hacker News Reader

This is a bit of a stretch; they don't even really compete with each other all that much. Hulu only has TV shows; it doesn't have huge volumes of user-generated content. People don't use Hulu to the exclusion of Youtube or vice versa.

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Thank you for pointing that out. I felt like I was losing my mind as I was reading Cuban's blog. Can someone direct me to the place on Hulu where I can upload my kid's gymnastics video so I can send it to my folks living overseas? Oh yeah, that place doesn't exist.

cuban's point is still valid, while youtube accepts user-generated content like your kid's gymnastics video, they will never be able to sell any ads against it, because no one other than you and your family will want to see that video, no offense.

Hulu also has movies. And YouTube gained popularity largely by hosting the copyrighted material that Hulu now does, though in smaller, less useful chunks that were constantly subject to DMCA takedown notices.

Hulu FTW.

You seemed to have missed the point.

If Youtube's future planning involved using it as a distribution and advertising system for movie or TV studios (an actual business model mind you), well that's potentially shot out of the water with Hulu out of the gates with a very good site and team to do that.

Also as a destination site, Hulu has more attractive content, actual licensed tv shows and movies. Stuff that are technically illegal on Youtube.

The chances of it ever getting such a deal were slim; the media companies already hated them for stealing their content before, and would not have wanted to reward that with a deal to do it legally (some did, yes, but it was unlikely that most or all of the content would have made it into Youtube- particularly with profit splitting between Google and the companies).

Yes, Hulu's content is attractive, but it's different from Youtube's content, which is attractive for other reasons. Just because they're both video doesn't mean they're directly competing.

I was under the impression some media companies had colluded with youtube to allow piracy for a big pay-out once someone bought youtube. This was to let youtube win the video content hosting race through piracy, while still paying for the content everyone thought was pirated.

I am having trouble finding a link to support this though. Does anyone recall this? Perhaps I'm mistaken...

"Yes, Hulu's content is attractive, but it's different from Youtube's content, which is attractive for other reasons."

Is Youtube's content attractive for reasons that would make it just as profitable as Hulu's content?

Cuban is arguing that it is not.

No, Cuban is arguing that Hulu is somehow "beating" Youtube. Even if it is more profitable, it's more profitable in the same way that Apple is more profitable than Adobe.

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