YouTube.app
zachwill.com
zachwill.com
The simple fact of the matter is that running YouTube costs money, and there's nothing wrong with making users pay for that in the form of ads. You don't want your sister to have to deal with that? Totally understandable. Maybe there should be some kind of kid-friendly video network that only shows appropriate videos (and appropriate comments)? I imagine a lot of parents would pay a monthly fee for access to that, and bypass advertising entirely.
As I often think when I read posts like this on Hacker News: you've just identified a market and a window of opportunity. Stop complaining and get working.
Ads are by definition someone asking the world, "who wants what we can provide?" The value is often for the person asking, rather than the person listening. Most of the time, ads rarely match up the two parties well, and as a result, the company tries its damn hardest to put askers everywhere listeners are listening. The result making for a sub-par user experience.
Often times in a company's search for revenue, it forgets about the end-user, and justify unpleasant user experiences with "Well, we gotta make money somehow." One can say, "well, if you don't like it, then leave." When users have a first chance to do so, they will, and then who will you advertise to?
The exception are ads in search, where the person asking (advertiser) is really well matched with the person listening (searcher). Google used restraint when it came to ads. It could have completely blasted the end user with flashy banner ads which were typical when it first started. However, it looked out for basic user value and user experience first. It is possible to serve ads, and have a good user experience.
The OP never was against paying for a simplified YouTube. It's not against YouTube making money. But it is against losing sight of the basic value of watching videos. It's like if you once wrote control tower software, and added bells and whistles to the point where you're not able to land planes anymore.
Once again, it's advocate for the basic value for the end user. Sometimes, when adding all the new-fangled stuff, we might lose sight of the basic value. That's what he's getting at.
When you don't read to understand the main point, and instead allow yourself to react to a knee-jerk reaction of your own sensibilities, you miss out from really hearing others.
Unfortunately GooTube's dominant, almost monopoly incumbent position in short videos makes it hard for others to offer such a service with a competitive video selection.
And while Google's strategic priority is fattening their marketing dossiers on everyone, and offering 'free'/subsidized loss-leader products as a moat around their search monopoly, it's unlikely Google would offer such a niche service.
Maybe someone could make it work, inside or outside the Googleplex, but in the meantime a 'complaining' blog post like this is perfectly appropriate and valuable, explaining a troubling trend and unmet need.
YouTube is the dominant, almost monopoly provider of short video hosting/viewing. It would not, by its terms of use policies, let a competing subscription service reuse its videos.
Google's strategic priority is improving its marketing targeting capabilities. This is widely understood by Google observers, and sometimes explicitly stated by Google itself, as the motivation behind the deep "Google+" integration across all services, and requirements like the 'real names' policies.
Google has a de facto monopoly in search and search-linked advertising: the largest index, the largest audience, the largest physical plant in a industry which has returns to scale, the largest broker position in the two-sided advertising auction markets. This gives them super-normal margins in that core business. Profits from that core business are used to subsidize lots of other adjacent businesses at a loss.
None of this accuses them of evil motives or actions. Their strategy has generally been legal and effective; other competent managers would be doing much the same thing provided with the same starting conditions and competencies.
Still, we should be able to honestly recognize their market power and strategies for what they are. Google's overwhemingly dominant position and preference for advertising/"sell-the-audience" models are facts about the terrain. These facts enable certain opportunities and preclude others. Projecting some sort of Manichean good/evil dimension onto the situation clouds rather than helps business analysis.
Complete bullshit. Google does not exclusively own the video on Youtube. There is either a market for an ad-free, kid-friendly for-pay video subscription service, or there isn't. Google's incumbent position doesn't come into it at all.
YouTube has all the mindshare -- it is synonymous with short video hosting for most people. It's a free offering that's been improved with Google's deep pockets and infrastructure. Its gigantic existing 'back catalog' provides deep lock-in -- for both uploaders and fans of existing material/watchlists. Its video results even seem to be favored in Google search, and immune to the 'DMCA notification volume penalty' Google recently announced would be affecting other sites.
Any economist (like say the PhDs on Google's staff) could explain there are large returns to scale, lock-in effects, and cross-subsidization and product tie-ins affecting this market, and GooTube is way out in front. It doesn't reduce to a binary "either there's a market... or not" and it's absurd to claim "Google's incumbent position doesn't come into it at all". The existing offerings by incumbents with brand, scale, contractual agreements, Android integration, and specific preferred models they're defending absolutely matter.
Let's call the hypothetical ad-free subscription kid service 'KidTube'. I'm not saying it'd necessarily be impossible to launch, just made a lot harder by YouTube's dominance.
The KidTube strategy would have to assume Google's resistance to easy migration of YouTube videos, for example via a bulk side-loading facility, even if the original uploaders wanted them reused. KidTube would also have to assume that if they got scale and traction, they would face a free competitor subsidized by Google's other revenues and product/promotional tie-ins. (For example, does your Google+ profile indicate you have children? Here's a targeted ad for our own kid service, the only one with all the videos your child already loves! All they have to do is create a juvenile Google+ profile! Please be sure to enter their real full name and birthdate.)
For service providers, profit based has been working fine to drive down prices, and I have no reason to believe that's a real impediment for any new competitor.
Maybe somebody else will make the app you want, with nothing but an endless selection of free content. Maybe everybody will love it. And then, it'll go broke or get acquired and we'll have to see a repeat of all the "don't be a free user" rants that show up on hacker news every time a beloved company wih no business model either dies or tries to start supporting itself.
They're also allowed to gripe about businesses who fail to accomodate their needs, especially when companies use the "first one is free" model to gain users and then suckify their product to make money (a process I dub "zyngafication".)
OP seeks a model which already exists. The PBSkids.app is extremely kid friendly, albeit with limited content. My Netflix queue is also loaded up with kid-friendly content with zero ads.
Actually, an ad-free kidzone would be a good move for youtube: parents love trusted brands, and brand loyalty starts young (want proof? What toothpaste was in your bathroom when you were a child? What laundry soap? What brand of cola? I'll bet that one of those three brands are in your house right now.)
Regarding donations: I didn't say content should be free. My second example was Netflix after all. I said that having ad-free on-line children's programming is possible technically and economically.
Let's make the quote generic:
> And now, presumably, $COMPANY will come out with its own version of a $SERVICE app for $PLATFORM focused on sharing to $SOCIALPLATFORM, and advertising, and all the unnecessary crap that my sister doesn’t really want. She’s going to have to transition from something easy, and useful, and fun, to something that’s most likely subpar and not as good as an older version.
This is a valid complaint, and it happens to a lot of stuff from a lot of different providers.
But, if we're talking about adverts: I'd consider subscribing and removing ads, but that's not an option that Youtube offers. Because I like the content I watch, and wish to support the creators, I watch the ads. And often they're lousy. There's no option to tell Youtube to stop showing me this ad that I have zero interest in. (I AM NEVER EVER GOING TO BUY ANYTHING FROM FUCKING JACAMO) I might even buy something from an advert if it was relevant to me. I'm one of the most ad-tolerant people I know, and if Youtube is getting it wrong for me then they're failing hard.
Also, Youtube keep showing me ads that probably are non-compliant with advertising codes in the UK. That's a problem.
That's a bit of a straw man, though. We don't even know what they'll come out yet, but we're just assuming it'll be much worse?
I've only used the Android app and I really don't see what's wrong with it - why would it be worse than the Android app?
Too much presumptuousness. Android Youtube app with Google+, advertising and unnecessary crap is very well designed. Live video streams etc. are quite useful.
If you want to know what YouTube by Google will look like on the iPad, you need only pick up a Nexus 7 and look at it.
To the author: http://contrastrebellion.com
That blog is just totally unreadable.
I agree - the grey text is hard to read. Mostly that's by design; down voted comments are supposed to be hard to read. But when someone starts a thread with a comment, instead of an external link, they grey text is weird and hard to read.
The normal text of HN is fine for contrast.
- Youtube app removal - New iMaps when you click a map link on a website your built in map app no longer loads showing you the address you seek. Rather, it now takes you to a dead end Google Map in your browser. - The iPhone 5 if the new designs seen throughout the blogosphere are true then MEH. The S3's design is slick; size of a credit card. - Wielding their patent power to try & kill the competition, which could possibly back fire on them.
I have owned various iPhone models over the past four years. Though I'm seriously considering a different manufacturer - hopefully one that provides the same level of customer service Apple does.
You also noted the move might bring ads and other unwanted noise. It will certainly. Someone has to pay for the service.
Now, what will be interested to see is how many people switch to Android because of it. My guess, close to 0.
Of all the videos I watch online from major sources, I have to give it to Google, their ads are the least annoying (possibility to minimize them or quit the video ads after 5 seconds).
http://googlemobileads.blogspot.nl/2012/08/trueview-video-ad...
And if at some point she does sees a Tickle-me-Elmo ad that makes her go nag her parents to buy her a Tickle-me-Elmo doll is that the end of the world?
It's always astounded me that in America (I am just assuming that the blog author is American) you have people who feel that non-essential services (like internet video distribution or email) should be ubiquitously free and available but at the same time you have people that feel health-care for everyone should not be a basic human right.
But then I realized I never upgrade iOS devices and just buy new ones, so she can milk out our existing iPads for at least a few years yet.. unless they'll totally disable access from the old YouTube app(?)
Just as Google is entitled to show ads, the user is entitled to disable Javascript.
It's a fair trade.
And as for inserting the ads into the video, as Zach says, she'll just figure out how to skip them.