Google Kills YouTube Originals
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
All the old television networks, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Apple, and others are pumping out more mediocre TV than anyone wants or cares to consume. The quality is too low and the quantity is too high.
It’s telling to me that the most-watched shows on these networks are often sitcoms from the 90s and 00s, despite a mountain of newer content going unnoticed.
A shakeout would be a good thing.
Now, I think these creators are banking their effort/ideas in the hopes that theaters will make a comeback at some point. However, at some point it will become clear that theaters are dead and that there will need to be a new business model (or acceptance of the current model) that creators will simply need to accept.
This seems flaws logic. Many people have pride in their work regardless. And even if selfish reasoning they know a hit gets renewed season or goes on their resume for better future earnings.
On my experience, the only reason the world works is because many people has pride in their jobs and go beyond their pay grade to make things work. And rarely are the better paid as they are more worried about good results that better pay for themselves. When I find people like that I try to help them as a sign of gratitude.
They get to charge more (or determine if it even exists) for season 2+ if it is a huge hit.
Also for a lot of Netflix's original content it is licensing streaming rights, not full ownership. I have seen news reports that they own 10% or less of their "Netflix Originals". So merchandising rights remain with the original owners\creators of the content.
I realized as a 20-50 middle income white guy I was the target demographic for 90%+ of the shows on television. Even if I thought X new sitcom was garbage at least I could relate to it. Now that isnt true so that show probably seems even less appealing than it did before.
So I just dont watch it. That's fine. And once in a while a squid games, BEHIND HER EYES, or damn it even love is blind pops up and I get to enjoy bingeing a show with family/friends. More content is coming out and it is more targeted. Those that are hits get renewed and those that flop dont. It's the same system as always but more targeted.
Forgive my ignorance, but is syndication even relevant to many of these shows/networks anymore, now that you can just drop something onto a streaming service and leave it there in perpetuity?
Who wants to have Neflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount+, HBOMax, Disney+, Hulu, CBS Whatevertheycallit, Peacock (NBC), etc., etc., etc., until you're paying $500/mo.? They'd love for that to happen, but there's no way. Nobody is going to do that.
Every content producer want 100% control and 100% profits. They're just going to kill the golden goose.
I'm not sure I agree that it's not a competitive marketplace though, just look at all the players! What I would agree with is that it's not consumer friendly, and I agree no one will pay $500/mo, but a lot of people have been paying $100-$150 for cable for decades, and for that budget you can still get a lot of good stuff without needing to get everything.
All that said though, the vertical integration is pretty interesting because this is how the movies studios were set up in the first half of the twentieth century. They owned the production (including actors as highly paid indentured servants) and the theaters. It was only in 1948 that anti-trust action was taken to force them to divest theaters. That's super interesting because it's hard to imagine that type of anti-trust action today.
Imagine that you could only go to AMC theatres to watch Spider-man. No other theatres could carry it.
Imagine that you could only buy Coke from 7-11. No other stores could carry it.
Imagine that you could only buy an iPhone from Verizon. No other carriers could sell it.
Imagine that you could only buy a computer with Windows pre-installed. There was no way to get a computer without giving money to Microsoft.
When the product being sold is captured by a single storefront or service, that actively harms consumers. They cannot choose the location with better service without choosing a different product. They cannot chose a better product without choosing a different service. Exclusives rob the customer of choice by making every choice an all-or-nothing offer.
That was movie production for decades. Same script, same characters, same ending all the time, to the point that suspension does not exists.
And if all theaters play all movies, there’s pretty good incentive for the business not to be dependent on one person.
And with indies, that don’t fall into “all movies” categories, there’s a pretty good incentive for a theater to optionally try them out anyways, as a differentiator beyond service.
The fact that Hollywood managed to do anyways I think is despite the incentives being against them.
Whereas in the current system, Disney and Netflix need to make the exact same movie twice so they can both have it in their catalog, to meet whatever checkbox. Or ape each other’s unique movies to avoid the “you need 5 subscriptions to see everything” problem
When the producer is also the broadcaster, they no longer have an incentive to license it to a competing broadcaster unless they think it'll earn them more money than remaining the exclusive broadcaster.
With TV, it makes more sense to syndicate after the show has run its course - the "first run" channels would have more new content that would be better suited to the prime-time slots than the stuff they have previously broadcasted. You have a limited number of timeslots to fill, do you really think advertisers will put in their biggest bids if they know they're going to be shown during re-runs? No, it is more profitable to get some new content that'll attract more eyeballs.
But with streaming, it's all VOD (video on demand). It doesn't matter when the content was produced because if you're the only one in town with show X, people have to subscribe to you to get show X (or pirate it, but most people prefer legal means). You don't have the limitation of filling timeslots on a TV channel and getting advertisers to out-bid each other anymore, because advertisers aren't even in the picture (or rather, they're doing product placement in your shows instead of also paying for airtime). Syndication means you are no longer the exclusive source of show X - and if you don't have a large pool of exclusive content, you will not get many customers.
In the past, you were just 1 of 100+ channels in a cable bundle. You needed to give consumers a reason to tune in, and you could only show one thing at a time. Now, you are 1 of (probably) less than 20 streaming services, and you can serve your entire library at the exact same time to anyone across the globe (pending licensing restrictions) - what's your pitch for why anyone should subscribe to you if they can get all your content elsewhere? If others have exclusives and you don't, you're going to lose. And not creating a streaming platform when everyone else has means you're earning less than you could - investors want returns, and they're going to start asking "ok so when do we get a bigger slice of the streaming pie?"
All this to say that we are in a competitive marketplace...just, one that competes on content and nothing else. You don't need to provide a better customer experience if you have something a lot of people want. It's like how YouTube has no incentive to improve because of the network effect relegating their former competitors to niches they have no incentive to pursue.
This marketplace sucks for consumers - if you want to watch Disney content (or any of the non-Disney content they've gobbled up), you have one option. Star Trek? AMC+ or Paramount+. Rinse and repeat for just about every other show.
I remember when people would complain about having to buy a cable bundle for just a handful of channels, especially when you only watched a few shows that weren't in the basic cable package. Then Netflix came around, and at its peak, it had 99% of what my mom and I wanted, and what was left, we were ok with just not watching or waiting until it ended up at the DVD rental store. Now, the shows my mom and I (legally) watch only take a little bit less than what we were paying for cable (and the lone DVD rental place left in town has become a CBD store with a couple shelves of disks gathering dust).
Uh, the CBS one is called “Paramount+”. Hulu and Disney+, I expect, will eventually merge since they are both fully-owned by Disney now. And there's more consolidation in progress.
Culture that fractures when electronic entertainment content produced by a tiny number of companies is siloed is not a culture that was worth preserving in the first place.
Take the sitcom Frasier (1993-2004). It is streaming exclusively on Peacock in the US, but they can still sell the broadcast rights to networks around the world. So in the UK, Frasier episodes are shown daily on Channel 4 in the mornings. That's an extra revenue stream right there, and it doesn't cannibalize Peacock as it doesn't operate in the UK.
The production studio that owns the show pays out the royalties, based on the income they receive from the channels syndicating the show. (Fox TV, for example, made Modern Family, which aired on ABC. Fox TV pays out the royalties received from the channels that syndicate reruns of the show, not ABC.)
When Modern Family was first made, that would have been a bigger distinction. Now, it's “which of Disney’s pockets are we talking about”?
> I don't think we are. I agree the the amount of just okay content that is being released seems overwhelming.
Agree.
It's a search space problem. If there was a perfect amount of ideal content, everyone would be glued to their screens 24/7.
Large and medium budget projects come in two forms:
- Easy win tentpole features. Marvel, Star Wars. Typically generic and bland (though they don't have to be) that can attract lots of eyeballs and starve your competition.
- Bold bets that garner attention by surprise. These surface the unknown or unmet interests of a broad number of consumers. Stranger Things (80's nostalgia and horror fantasy), Squid Game (Battle Royale / Hunger Games still has gas).
Netfix is trying to find a lot of the second category by firing shots into search space. It's producing mixed results, which should be expected. Unfortunately they can't slow down yet, because their third party content libraries are drying up.
The problem is that it's all too expensive. Difficult and costly to make, and too many things that can go wrong and turn any good project into something that sucks. Everything has to be perfect.
Netflix can afford to do more curation in the future once consolidation has happened. Perhaps buying NBC, CBS, or the new Discovery could give them some breathing room.
When any field gets too saturated, the best way to shine is to focus on underserved niches.
This is a subjective statement. You might even dislike shows on a particular service, but to say all of them are “objectively bad” and you think people watch more of “90s sitcoms” tells me that you probably prefer 90s sitcoms. :)
I’m basically cycling between these providers each month. The Expanse, The Morning Show, Hawkeye, Succession, For All Mankind.
Last year was the most television I’ve watched since I was a kid.
And this fact was noticed contemporaneously - remember all of the very serious thinkpieces opining that people were rotting their brains in front of the TV watching content so brain-dead that you need a laughtrack to tell the audience when to laugh.
Personally I think that was just snobbery - the mediocre sitcoms were fine and perfectly ok entertainment and there was no need for any kind of moral panic - but let's not pretend that that was some kind of golden age of sophisticated content.
I've just noticed that for many years, Netflix would show that their most-watched show was The Office. And I'm sitting here thinking -- all of this new content and the thing people are watching is over a decade old?
South Park, Family Guy, Friends, Sienfield... I've seen these promoted by multiple services as the most-watched shows available.
I don't think "created something more popular than The Office" is a good metric to decide that Netflix only creates mediocre content. The Office is really popular! There's plenty of room for creating high quality content, even if no single show reaches the level of popularity of The Office.
That said, I think more and more people are realizing this so I'm hopeful things would improve. For example, one of the most underrated streaming services IMO is HBO Max - they don't have a lot of content but the quality of of what they have is pretty good.
It doesn't matter what you don't watch, garbage or not.
I don't think a 30-60 minute show is worth $14.99. Other things are only available on $50+/month live TV services. So, I end up waiting until there are a few things I want to watch on a subscription service, then buying or trialing it for a month, and cancelling. It's just annoying.
I disagree with your claim about people are primarily watching old content (source?). Just looking at one list for Netflix [1], it's all fairly recent shows with the notable exception of Seinfeld. It's actually astounding what a money-making machine Seinfeld is 25 years after being on the air. Even before streaming, Seinfeld reruns would get >1m viewers on cable. It's crazy.
I actually believe the last 20 years have been (and seemingly continue to be) the golden age of television. Technology finally made practical heavily serialized content and TV enables types of content not possible in movies. Movies are just limited to ~3 hours in length (director's cuts of Dances with Wolves notwithstanding). Movies are for short stories. TV is for books.
This is a structural change in the industry and despite the Big Brother-esque mediocrity we've also seen over this period, it's undeniable that we've seen some of the greatest entertainment ever to grace a screen in the last 20 years.
[1]: https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/tv-ratings-seinfeld-you-squ...
I realize this is just one data point, but the most-streamed show in 2020 was The Office, close to a decade after its last episode was released.
https://variety.com/2021/digital/news/the-office-most-stream...
In the broadcast world, the relevant "inventory" (ie. TV Network Channel time slot) is very limited and precious. Therefore only content with production quality that appeals to a large enough audience to attract advertisers gets greenlit.
In the past year, my family has binge watched "blown away" a glass blowing competition, 3 series about weird/exotic vacation rentals/hotels, 2 children's mysteries serises, standup comedy by specific comediens, a series about music production and composition styles of different artists and a series about design. All of these above ran multiple seasons, so clearly there's sufficient profitable viewership for multiple seasons to be made even though it's very likely NONE of them would make mainstream broadcast TV. We didn't see any of the "big/popular" shows.
The only reason we have cable TV connection at all now is when my parents or in-laws visit, they get very bored without their.regular TV channels.
In the broadcast world, the relevant "inventory" (ie. TV Network Channel time slot) is very limited. Therefore only content with production quality that appeals to a large enough audience to attract advertisers gets greenlit. There's no such limitations in subscription supposed the digital content delivery (aka OTT) economic model. You only have to get sufficient audience to at least recoup your production costs and the minimal per stream delivery costs.
In the past year, my family has binge watched "blown away" a glass blowing competition, 3 series about weird/exotic vacation rentals/hotels, 2 children's mysteries serises, standup comedy by specific comediens, a series about music production and composition styles of different artists and a series about design. All of these above ran multiple seasons, so clearly there's sufficient profitable viewership for multiple seasons to be made even though it's very likely NONE of them would make mainstream broadcast TV. We didn't see any of the "big/popular" shows which do make it to broadcast TV. I'm very sure there are enough households like mine that drives multiple seasons of the above "niche" shows.
The only reason we have cable / broadcast TV connection at all now is when my parents or in-laws visit, they get very bored without their regular TV channels.
while you site a few cherry picked series that lasted a few years, netflix is really quick to cancel shows. Honestly the original content Netflix spits out has less diversity than broad cast tv, and they have about as much patience to keep those shows 'on the air'.
Netflix actually has extremely diverse programming on all levels. By genre, by budget, by language, by subject matter, by age rating, by quality, Netflix covers absolutely every quadrant.
What is "left leaning dystopian"? Never mind, I don't want to know. It's embarrassing.
...yet the last few years have been quite hard! All of us are navigating a COVID environment where working remotely, educating kids, and entertaining ourselves have all blended together. There's a bifurcation of eyeballs - I simply don't have the time or emotional bandwidth to watch "prestige tv", but it's very easy for me to put on friends, or the office, or seinfeld, and carry on with my day!
They collect shit-ton of data on everything of the users, and track eyeballs (not literally, I think)- what are people watching, what are people binging, etc.
They are forming clusters of users based on demographic, purchase power, etc, and mapping those clusters to features in content.
And if a certain overall kind or discreet feature is worth the amount of eyeball it is attracting, a designed, soulless series gets created with those features, or two.
This is what modern, app-TV feels to me. No art, no quality. Just content tailor-made and factory produced to match the taste of favored demographics with purchase power. And they not only want to match. They want to maximize.
They want the maximum amount of people to watch something, not small amounts of people finding their niche.
I cannot tolerate this kind of content, and I am unsubscribed to all services except Amazon Prime for free delivery of goods.
That doesn't mean there aren't some good TV. I would consider Bosch to be quality TV, and Ozark is okay-ish. The Expanse, too.
But I am done with conveyor-belt driven app-TV.
I will just binge The Wire when I am sick. Thank you.
Reed Hastings was furious after that call ended. Conversation still ringed in his ears. Another journalist implying how bad tech giants exploit the data, “spy” (gasp!) on customers.
He opened the cabinet, took a whiskey bottle, and poured single malt into a heavy glass. His office was quiet again, anger subsided, and he was finally able to relax. Today’s call was fourth this week, maybe fifth. For the past couple of month all the media was hunting for were stories on ad targeting, behavior tracking, privacy breach…
Everyone and their dog implied that there is full-on spying on every single customer to drive the views. People who had no idea how this worked, who invested zero hours into building something meaningful, while spending all their life magnifying the rage through social media.
“I wonder if there is a trendy hashtag already, something like #trackingate?” — Mr. Reed caught himself spiraling again into the unpleasant memories of his latest conversations with the press. Poor fellas haven’t been able to scratch even the surface of how it all works.
“You don’t need to track every eyeball. Just a select few of them. Carefully selected.” Mr. Reed smirked, eyed a precious glass jar filled with white jelly marbles, and closed the cabinet door.
It also hides some of the good stuff because you can't typically filter, sort, or search based on things like reviews.
I loved Disjointed on Netflix, but I understand it's too silly for many. If I want to find Ukrainian rom coms,I can find it .
This was unheard of 20 years ago.
Now you got me curious
There was also huge glut of forgettable content back then. Most 90s and 00s shows were low quality crap too. No one is watching those now. The handful of shows that survived and made it onto today’s streaming services are the greatest of that era.
Less is more.
Good content is not a fixed % of total. So if you increase total you might just water down the % of good content... Or worse, if practices focus on quantity entirely you may end up with 0% good content.
Even shows I used to enjoy seem to have taken a steep decline since about 2018.
The things in decline imho are due to studios taking their best people off the project to kick start new ones
The most recent has been the proliferation of Streaming services and original content to try and own unique content per-platform. Netflix and HBO did well from 2014-2017, and everyone else hopped onto the bandwagon to mediocre effect since
Agree. We remember the good shows from the previous decades, but there was a lot of thrash
Right now you have about 10 going for a very general audience and there is no way that that will work.
As the subscription money keeps flowing, there is an incentive to publish a minimum number of new series / shows / what not, and there are only so many good ideas at any given time.
Add to that, there is no clear profit/loss equation for online streaming (even though you have viewership numbers, there is no definite link between retention and viewership numbers for a given content. As an example, I just saw Eternals on Disney+, just because of the marketing and branding, but felt bored of it. Clearly I am adding to the viewership, but not to the pull factor that keeps me on the provider)
What is unique about Youtube is that everything is non-fiction. When was the last time any Youtube success was fictionalized content?
That's what Youtube Originals tried to change, and failed at.
YouTube is definitely lacking in the traditional "TV show" department if that's what you mean.
Cobra Kai seems successful. Unfortunately, YouTube dropped it and Netflix picked it up. The irony is that, while Google makes a lot of money from ads, its sibling Netflix kinda sucked at advertising the show. I didn't know about Cobra Kai until it was on Netflix.
"What does the Fox say" is non-fiction?
"Baby Shark" is non-fiction?
"Gangnam Style" is non-fiction?
A 40 minute video essay feels insightful, I know that I'm really there for the entertainment but I can justify it to myself like I'm learning something and that makes me feel good. The things that I categorize as "mindless entertainment" are short and low commitment; I don't feel bad watching a 3 minute comedy sketch. When YouTube was trying to push Cobra Kai on me I thought, "that is not how I want to spend the next 30 minutes," then I wasted the next 30 minutes anyways on mindless entertainment with a series of 3-4 minute videos.
Today. There is ton of it.
I am paying for Premium because I like YouTube but don't want ads! Stop trying to do something different. If I wanted that I would be paying for Netflix.
I know people want to fight against Youtube premium but it's a pointless fight, all that's gonna happen is the less techy-savvy will get bombarded with ads, the more the tech-savvy folk resist, I'm accepting the reality that this free service now needs either a paid plan or to serve more ads, I'm not resisting it, it's just the way it is.
Also, how do the common folks block ads on their smart tv, a very common means to watch Youtube? I only know because I'm a programmer, but most people won't know about a wifi-level adblocker.
I appreciate you have these ideals but have you wondered what will happen if every Youtube user in the world starts using AdBlock? In the process leading up to it, people lagging behind will get increasingly worse ads, and when that singularity hits people will need to disable AdBlock to access Youtube, and a mass amount of people will just opt-in to Youtube Premium anyway, or deal with the ads again. There is no alternative to Youtube.
I'm not going to fight against this type of stuff, I think it makes sense that this app which has been free for over a decade, now has an option to subscribe and get an ad-free experience, it makes total sense, we've just been spoiled.
There was also a time (I think when it was called YouTube Red) that it was just a package deal with Google Play Music and that was basically what I was paying for, and the ad-free YouTube was just a bonus. Though once they killed off GPM it was one of the last straws for me in the Google ecosystem so I bought an iPhone, switched to Apple Music and now I'm just continuing to pay for ad-free YouTube.
The same goes for Stadia too. The platform is good enough, but there just isn't much incentive for people to join it.
TechMoan is a great British YouTuber who does videos about old tech & media formats too - https://www.youtube.com/c/Techmoan
YouTube isn't competing with Netflix/Disney+/etc, they are the ones competing with YouTube and the idea of infinite hyper specialized crowdsourced content which is most personal and intimate than anything they could ever offer.
Makes perfect sense to kill it.
Take all the FPV train videos made by train engineers on their routes. Or the dudes who sit around at popular inlets in Florida recording lake boats attempting (and often failing) to go into open ocean. Or the person who does ASMR car detailing. Or the dude on Australia who jets out plugged drains. Or the people who live stream airplanes landing at LAX for 10 hours.
Nobody would ever put that onto a cable TV channel yet each of these content creators have a loyal audience that at minimum funds a hefty beer fund.
When I pay for Netflix, I expect high production value. There's no way I would pay for crowdsourced videos made by amateurs when I could watch it for free on Youtube.
That being said, these creators already get a ton of views to start with, and as cool as the highly produced content was, I don't think it realistically brought more views than the normal videos.
Definitely always seemed like a bad fit. But I think the idea of crowdsourcing content like tictok or youtube which is those platforms, doesn’t work for longer form, episodic shows or movies. You get established stars.
There’s no real finite limit on the amount of tictoks can be created people will like but is a finite amount on the talent available to make a watchable movie or show.
- Listen to / watch podcast (2 - 4 hours)
- Watch videos from a handful of creators like Linus Tech Tips or Tom Scott (3 hours)
- Listen / watch various conference talks (1 - 2 hours)
- Listen to music (~6 hours)
See that’s where I think YouTube dropped the ball if they had got some of that popular content instead of funding new creators.
https://www.youtube.com/c/YannicKilcher - deep learning paper summaries
https://www.youtube.com/c/tested - Adam Savage's Tested, learn about making
https://www.youtube.com/c/smartereveryday - Learning about science/engineering
https://www.youtube.com/c/BadFaithPodcast - podcast about social issues
https://www.youtube.com/user/aragusea - Cooking, most similar to Alton Brown's Good Eats
https://www.youtube.com/c/Wendoverproductions - How transportation tech and geopolitics work
https://www.youtube.com/c/VisualPolitikEN - Geopolitics explanations
https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections - How devices work
https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEngineering - Engineering explanations
https://www.youtube.com/c/Freakinreviews Reviews of As-seen-on-tv type products
https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown - Intuitive/visual explanations of math
Beyond that I have various hobbies I follow like stocks, gardening/hydroponics.
- loud enough to drown out other, outside sounds (big problem for me these last two years WFH in a city apartment)
- consistent enough that they stop being their own distraction once you get used to it (hours of soothing air horns and crossing-guard chimes!)
- cool way to see landscape/drone shots of parts of the world I might never visit
- repetitive enough that any time I do take a mental break and actually focus on the video I don't feel like I've missed anything (my biggest problem with spoken-word videos / TV series / some music)
This is a good example, plus I'm in totally love with those high-hood GP9s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRE_rsiqSoQ
Here are some channels I enjoy for their long-form videos:
- https://www.youtube.com/c/DelayInBlockProductions
- https://www.youtube.com/c/RailfanJunction
- https://www.youtube.com/c/RanOutOnARail
- https://www.youtube.com/c/CoasterFan2105
Interestingly, those hours just go to TikTok now.
I am staying on YouTube because it is one of the most accessible site for Deaf users as they offers closed captioning/subtitle services. And I am fortunate that lot of content creators have the option enabled. I preferred professional captioning over auto-captioning but not every content creator could afford such a service.
In YouTube, I don't rely on their algorithm to tell me the best video to watch since their algorithm is shit. Instead I relies on content creator's community page and word-of-mouth to expand my viewing and subscriptions. Their algorithm kept recommending me Classically Abby (Ben Shapiro's sister) channel every chance they get and I hardly ever watch political stuff on YouTube.
It saves me time with content I can use for development/engineering, NFL and sports, finance, blockchain, music, podcasts, home improvement, news, Leviathan (2014 film), etc. and occasionally one of the YouTubers like Mr. Beast.
It's hard for me to find new content i'm will to binge, but the subscription platforms need to keep the pipeline running.
Cheers
Looks like most English-language content stopped in 2018 or 2019, though they continued producing films, documentaries, and a surprisingly large slate of kids shows through 2021.
I guess my point is that I don't think I've seen a YouTube Original advertised or recommended to me in years, so either this is a mercy killing of a division that never made anything all that good, or Google simply has no idea how to market the things that it creates. Heck, the one success of YouTube Originals that I remember, Cobra Kai, is now a Netflix show. How does that happen?
They didn't do what every other platform did initially: Fill it with content to draw people in. It's certainly difficult to do in the modern era of hyper fragmented content platforms, but YouTube is still a centerpiece of modern content delivery. Without that content, all they could offer was their actual original content. Yes, the YouTube Movies channel exists, but that's not a wide selection.
I don't think that's necessarily all YouTube's fault. The siloing of content is a significant problem, and this failure likely represents real problems for the future of streaming for customers.
Of the Originals content, Cobra Kai was the only good show I recall from it, and they sold that to Netflix. The only other Original I can think of is MindField, which was a good enough show, but I kept bouncing off of it. It didn't really seem interested in answering the questions it posed.
Stadia - If they're serious about this they should pay 10B for Valve and make it so anyone can play any computer game available on Steam via Stadia.
Daydream - Bring it back and make it work
Android - Feels like it's stagnating. They need to think of some groundbreaking features at this point
WearOS - Feels dead already
Not necessarily you can buy out anyone by the sheer power of money. Buy out Valve and you'll destroy its creative freedom that got them there in the first place.
I don't think an acquisition by Google would have anything to do with Valve's "creative freedom"--the evidence of which has been pretty scant for the last decade or so. ;) More for the storefront and the platform.
(I absolutely do not want this to happen, obviously.)
Valve does not own the rights to every video game on Steam.
Publishers abandoned GeForce now for reasons around licensing, but Apple made digital asset usage mainstream with the original iPod.
More recently Google allows you to upload and read your own books on play books and your own music to YouTube music. Game publishers would bicker for sure, but there’s no reason Google couldn’t argue that you’re purchasing a cloud hard drive and it’s mounted to the closest compute aka stadia
It really could go either way.
Rephil: https://www.quora.com/How-does-Googles-topic-model-Rephil-wo... and 26.5.4 Case study: Google’s Rephil 928 from Kevin Murphy's ML book.
Rephil was critical for google when they needed to cluster topics and it was used for a wide range of other things.
Smartass: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...
Smartass is really weird if you come from the "batch training of deep networks" world, because it's online, and visits the dataset once, in temporal order. But. it's as ML as it gets; it was just turning joined clicks (between search queries and ad impressions) into weights for pCTR.
Sibyl was Google's secret sauce before tensorflow started in 2007, it implemented parallel boosting using mapreduce as a worker engine to do linear and logistic regression and was used to train the models for youtube watch next and play store (both of which produced enormous revenue at a time when people had no idea that youtube and android were gold mines) but predated those uses by at least 5 years. It was one of the oddest systems I've ever worked on and you can see some of the ideas it innovated in TFX today.
There's also SETI which IIRC even predated Sibyl, and you still can see vestiges of its functionality when doing archeological work on the google codebase.
I worked on systems related to smartass, worked on sibyl, and later tensorflow/TPU hardware/software. I met a number of long-time engineers and asked them deep questions about ML use at Google predating tensorflow and gained a deep understanding (and even then, I've left out many details about systems I'm not aware of). Before tensorflow there wasn't much use of GPUs or TPUs, for several reasons but once Vincent Vanhouke stuffed a few GPUs in his workstation and showed fast training to Jeff Dean, that changed quickly.
I wouldn't be as negative as the original poster but they do seem poorly led and that's hurting them. Even GCP gets hit with C-level concern that “Google kills products” and their sales team has been under-motivated in my experience.
Won't work. Geforce Now essentially tried this, and many publishers/gamedevs threw a big fit and threatened legal action. Unfortunately, GFN caved and removed the games.
Google Photos has been a runaway success.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90380618/how-google-photos-joine...
Do you have example of content which is found on most other streaming sites but uses Youtube video on YTM?
The only connection to YouTube is you can also listen to songs that are only uploaded to YouTube, which is a nice touch if you want to listen to tiny/hobby musicians with like 50 fans, unofficial live recordings of popular artists, niche international songs not licensed for sale in the US so they end up on YouTube, etc.
But 99% of the time, you're just listening to the same high quality versions of songs that any other streaming service has.
I pay like 130 rupees a month (£1.30 GBP) for it. Worth it just for no ads on my phone and background playback.
Only 'gripe' is that YouTube Music sometimes pops up with random Bollywood/Indian tunes but once you train the alogrithm they disappear too (although I use Spotify anyway so it doesn't really matter).
What's news is Google's hitrate at developing new divisions into successful lines of business. It must be a small fraction of that of Amazon's hit rate.
Google's largest successes have been acquisitions, too. Amazon seems to have developed a lot of huge businesses internally, from scratch.
Answer: They used to be the leading restaurant review book, pre-internet. Google bought it in 2011, and has now sold it off.
Question: what is Zagat?
Let's continue for $1,000.
Answer: This Schaumburg, IL company was a pioneer in electronics before the smartphone era. Google paid $12.5 billion for a division of it in 2012, and has now sold it off.
Question: What is Motorola?
The patents were never asserted against anyone. Were they useful as leverage in cross-licensing deals? No, not particularly.
Since patent infringement suits are generally brought against the final manufacturer of the hardware, what this did is make Google the defendant in a lot of lawsuits against Motorola.
I personally looked over all 20K+ Google patents (mostly via our summary tools, not reading every word). Most of the Motorola ones were utterly worthless.
Because who knows the over-under on when they cancel that, too?
Youtube doesn’t seem like it should be competing with Netflix and Hulu its a whole different type of website.