Hacker News Reader

Comment by RubberShoes | Hacker News Reader

Google acquiring YouTube

"In the Plex" by Steven Levy goes into great detail on how YouTube could not survive its growth without the infrastructure and ad technologies Google brought to the platform.

View on HN

That's an argument for the acquisition of YT by Google being net positive, but it doesn't answer the OP's question, which he specifically restricts to the "less tangible parts of the smaller company".

>but it doesn't answer the OP's question

I think it does, otherwise OP's question is ill-posed. That is, if YouTube scaled independently from a scrappy startup to a $170billion behemoth, the changes in corporate governance and culture would have been equally as drastic as being acquired by Google.

Youtube, the product, maybe makes more money. However, Youtube, the community, was much better initially, which I suppose can be expected with most communities as they grow.

Bad actors creep in, which creates new rules, which negatively impacts the whole, which causes resentment, which causes more bad actors, which lead to more rules, and before you know it, review-girls don't seem so bad when your feed lands on terrorist-mickeymouse and the syringe babies.

Youtube only existed publicly for around a year before being acquired. I don't think it supported comments on videos. Whether or not YT's community was better early on (which like, I'm not even sure is true) is independent from whether its acquisition by Google affected that community, because YT was acquired basically before there was any chance for a community to develop.

That's a new claim not made in the comment I replied to (and arguably still not really answering the question, which is definitely not ill-posed).

totally unnecessary argument there bro. just take it as it comes, no need to respond and dissect everything.

That sounds like the author is defining good as "what I like, and can't or won't tell you."

I realize OP is talking more about the experience of the workers than the users, and I don't have an inside scoop here, but I'd put forward “Google acquiring Keyhole” as well. Google was in a unique position to allow anyone with a browser to view satellite photos from around the world, for free, and have the economics make sense for them.

I have a somewhat inside scoop from working with various early Keyhole employees, and my impression is that they were generally happy with the acquisition. At the very least, quite a few of them stuck around long past the golden handcuffs stage.

Also Android.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com