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pradn

Positives:

* Presided over a vast increase in revenue, from $4 to $29 billion

* Steered the ship through a number of content controversies

* Anecdotally, the brand value of YouTube remains good

* YouTube Premium seems to have good uptake

* Presided over enormous cost savings with custom encoder hardware

* Few major technical outages, good streaming performance generally

* Relationships with advertisers and content creators generally remain good

Negatives:

* Missed the Twitch/streaming wave

* Missed the TikTok, short video wave

* YouTube Originals flopped (partly bc they didn't commit hard enough, not like Netflix or Amazon)

* Overall low user experience - slow/complex website and apps

* Issues for content creators - overly aggressive ContentID, not rewarding short but valuable videos enough (indie animation), opaque demonetization rules

* No shrinking of the algorithmic filter bubble

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> Overall low user experience

I literally have to wait for 5 seconds for 3 dot menus under videos to load on the main page. It's ridiculous.

> * Relationships with advertisers and content creators generally remain good

I'd say this is due to lack of competition and network effects than a good relationship. CuriosityStream, Nebula, and even channels as benign as Linus Tech Tips trying to get Floatplane off the ground show this relationship is far from strong. Your non-edgy creators wouldn't be trying to replace you if they thought you were doing a good job.

It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either. Millions of creators and billions of users generally have a good experience on YouTube. There's been no "let's try Mastodon" moment.

Funnily enough I really like YouTube shorts. A lot of Tiktokers cross post and because of this I haven’t found a reason to download TikTok.

> I haven’t found a reason to download TikTok

Its a good business. My daughter isn't allowed Tiktok, but youtube comes with every phone and ipad already...

* Missed out on stand up comedy!

Netflix became the comedy powerhouse by, most likely, just looking at what unofficial standup uploads had the most views on YouTube and making appropriate offers.

To be fair, Netflix had already built out original programming. YouTube hasn't.

Last I checked there were multiple direct replies to this commenting on how censorship issues weren't mentioned as negative, and now those replies are mysteriously all completely missing, which is about as ironic as you can possibly get. Comments complaining about censorship issues are themselves censored.

> YouTube Originals flopped

Maybe as a whole, but Cobra Kai was excellent and very popular!

Also, in the long-run, will having "missed" streaming & shorts necessarily be a bad thing? Time will tell.

I wish they never introduced shorts. Why do all platforms need to be everything to everyone? Why can't they focus on just being the best platform for user-created long-form video? I probably know the answer, but it makes me sad that that's the reality we live in.

Cobra Kai was a huge flop for youtube (missed opportunity?), because they had to sell it off, couldn't keep it going, and to be honest, I'm not sure it would've been great had it stayed there, I enjoyed the first 2 seasons, but Netflix has just gotten better and better, and you can tell from the last youtube season to the first Netflix season how the quality shifted.

Just discovered something very interesting: She is resigning one day after Google received a subpoena from the U.S. House of Representatives demanding answers to questions on censorship of conservative voices, and specifically on content moderation decisions.

Yes, just yesterday. Subpoena to resignation.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-republicans-subpoena...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/15/house-r...

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3859762-house-gop-subp...

That's actually a really bad look (pro PR tip: Don't resign immediately after bad press - delay your resignation to avoid association if possible - or, if you know a certain political group doesn't like you and you're planning to retire, maybe resign before they get into power). Particularly important because Twitter is all over that "connection" right now that was pretty unnecessary. It appears that the subpoena was directed at Google, but her resignation means she may not have to personally have to personally testify, as Google could send the new CEO in.

It's interesting timing but she will still have to testify about all the time she was in charge, resigning doesn't really change anything.

Not as bad as the look of conservative voices since 2016

Is this a form of synesthesia?

Wow, that literally doesn't matter at all.

There's absolutely nothing stopping Congress from issuing her a direct subpoena.

Do you think this is as big or even bigger than the silencing of conservative voices revealed in the "Twitter Files"?

I don't think this press looks bad, it merely looks like partisan bickering without substance. Particularly with how widely publicized it is that YouTube facilitates radicalization towards right wing ideologies in the past. Resigning after those allegations wouldn't have looked bad either.

It’s a coincidence. This had to be in works for months (or something substantial had to go down). Also, they get subpoenaed all the time across various committees.

Yeah exactly, this level of resignation is in the works for months

She wasn't subpoenaed, and as a CEO of a multinational, there is always recent bad press you could point to that makes it a "bad time" to resign.

Googling "republicans subpoena sundar" returns similar articles from 2020 and 2018 (such as https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/senate-republicans-vote-to-s... and https://theprint.in/india/governance/google-ceo-sundar-picha...).

Republicans have been complaining about perceived persecution for years (decades), there's no real Youtube-related news in the fact that they are asking companies about it now that they have a house majority...

There's a dead reply to this calling the phrasing "perceived persecution" "gaslighting" that I think is somewhat interesting for a couple of reasons:

1) It's undeniable that Republicans have been complaining about this shit. It's also something not everyone agrees happens at the level of the complaint. So "perceived" seems like an accurate description of the situation.

2) There's mention of a "strangehold" on journalism from Democrats which is exactly one of the sorts of complaints I was mentioning: but it's also one that seems no truer today than it was when I was hearing it on radio stations 25 years ago. Mainstream media personalities complaining that no personalities like themselves existed in the mainstream media. From Rush on the radio then to today's wave either on cable TV or online, the song remains the same. This is why personally I think the claims of persecution is wildly overblown.

> "perceived" seems like an accurate description of the situation.

Look, I hate all politics and politicians and don't care for one over the other, but I do not understand how anybody can perceive this as a sensible take post twitter-files. It's not perceived, it's indisputably accurate. I get it, I get it, political partisans abound and want to have their tampering ignored, but there should be limits, and this pretty clearly steps over them for anybody paying even the slightest amount of attention.

Imagine going through life giving "pro PR tip"s when you're this ignorant of where true power lies.

Tech companies have not feared the US government in decades. They embarrass or ignore US senators and representatives. See former (yes, they can subpoena you after you leave the company) Twitter employees embarrassing Donald Trump at these same hearings last week.

The more likely conspiracy theory is Wojcicki lost an internal power struggle. Google hasn't been doing great. Pichai hasn't been doing great. Wojcicki going for the top job and not getting it, and leaving is a much more believable scenario.

She's resigning days after a bad quarterly result came out for YouTube, which seems much more likely to be related. I can't imagine the subpoena thing being relevant for a number of reasons:

1) Wojcicki wasn't subpoenated, 2) everyone expected subpoenas to come, and if she wanted to avoid them, it would have been smarter to resign the day before, not the day after, 3) the panels are political theater and aren't based on any sort of evidence or reality, 4) Even if this was a super real issue and Wojcicki sat down and confessed to illegally murdering Republicans on Joe Biden's orders, there would be no consequences, since Democrats control the Senate. The news coverage from both sides would be roughly the same either way.

my user experience is pretty great. Any time I run into a video on a blog somewhere and realize it's hosted at yt, it's a huge relief to me. What video streaming service is more reliable or higher quality?

yt shorts are very successful. But regardless, I don't think that a CEO is unsuccessful any time innovation happens anywhere else in the world besides within their own company. That YT is a social media platform which has only become more relevant over the last 17 years is a pretty stunning track record. What other service has shown such longevity?

UX gripe: It would be nice if YouTube remembered where I stopped watching a 3 hour video, so that I would not have to seek myself next time I resume. Spotify does it and it’s so convenient!!!

It does resume on the desktop. It does not on Android. Go figure.

It seems likely that YouTube TV is also going well.

Some numbers would be helpful. I recently got it for Superbowl, because I couldn't be bothered to find pirate stream and cancelled it shortly thereafter. I did look at what else they offer why I had access. Nothing that would make me think of staying anyway.

I tend to think all those services rely heavily on old TV-addicts like my wife.

It’s worth getting a TV antenna for events like this. If you don’t have a TV, YouTube TV is a good option but expensive.

I wouldn't be so sure about TikTok. YouTube Shorts seems to be quite good and popular.

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