Thanks to data peering agreements, Youtube doesn't actually cost Google a whole lot to run. Thanks to 90% automation for disputes they don't have to hire as many people as you might think, and most of those are the literal cheapest and stupidest on the planet who just follow scripts anyway. Those plaques cost like maybe $10 per. Data storage? Ridiculously cheap these days.
They make a killing from pedowood paying them to promote their digital bullshit in suggestions, from raking 30% off the top in superchats and memberships, selling premium plans after removing useful features and locking them away behind a paywall and, yes, conventional old advertising. They've been profitable for quite a few years. $30 Billion in 2021 was the last number I remember.
This is just a case of "there's money on the table and we're just going to take it because our users will fully accept any ass-ramming we want to do." Same reason Google reneged on their free Workspaces. Same reason they threaten to delete inactive accounts (keeping them around costs nothing, it's the threats that seek to encourage more usage to data mine and use for AI training).
It's the competitors which can't afford to get off the ground. No peering (no one is going to say no to Google and risk the ire of their customers, but they'll say no to Random Nazi-filled Competitor, as least how leftists see them). No scale for automation. No hollywood money. No sportsball money. No one will open their wallets on weird sites. And no conventional advertising on, again, Random Nazi-filled Competitor.
Youtube may be cheap for Google since they have their own data storage and server hosting, but to compete with it a company would have to buy/use cloud services like Azure. Those services (I think) would be prohibitively expensive for a site that lets anyone upload anything.
I've worked for companies that host regular websites that are relatively low impact (hugely low compared to something like Youtube) and the cloud service costs were really expensive still. I think to create a competitor to Youtube you'd need to set up your own server architecture which is no small feat. Consider that you'd need redundancies and probably want at least 2 locations with the space and ability to host a massive site having gigabytes (if not terabytes) of data uploaded every month.
It seems as though Google poured money into Youtube for about a decade and only turned it profitable recently; which is ridiculously unfair when it comes to competition. No one else (other than huge companies like Microsoft/Amazon/Apple) can afford to do that.
Basically I made this comment to say I disagree that Youtube doesn't cost much to run; even for Google I'm sure it is really expensive to host tons of data and constantly stream it everywhere for free.
Thanks to data peering agreements, Youtube doesn't actually cost Google a whole lot to run. Thanks to 90% automation for disputes they don't have to hire as many people as you might think, and most of those are the literal cheapest and stupidest on the planet who just follow scripts anyway. Those plaques cost like maybe $10 per. Data storage? Ridiculously cheap these days.
They make a killing from pedowood paying them to promote their digital bullshit in suggestions, from raking 30% off the top in superchats and memberships, selling premium plans after removing useful features and locking them away behind a paywall and, yes, conventional old advertising. They've been profitable for quite a few years. $30 Billion in 2021 was the last number I remember.
This is just a case of "there's money on the table and we're just going to take it because our users will fully accept any ass-ramming we want to do." Same reason Google reneged on their free Workspaces. Same reason they threaten to delete inactive accounts (keeping them around costs nothing, it's the threats that seek to encourage more usage to data mine and use for AI training).
It's the competitors which can't afford to get off the ground. No peering (no one is going to say no to Google and risk the ire of their customers, but they'll say no to Random Nazi-filled Competitor, as least how leftists see them). No scale for automation. No hollywood money. No sportsball money. No one will open their wallets on weird sites. And no conventional advertising on, again, Random Nazi-filled Competitor.
Youtube may be cheap for Google since they have their own data storage and server hosting, but to compete with it a company would have to buy/use cloud services like Azure. Those services (I think) would be prohibitively expensive for a site that lets anyone upload anything.
I've worked for companies that host regular websites that are relatively low impact (hugely low compared to something like Youtube) and the cloud service costs were really expensive still. I think to create a competitor to Youtube you'd need to set up your own server architecture which is no small feat. Consider that you'd need redundancies and probably want at least 2 locations with the space and ability to host a massive site having gigabytes (if not terabytes) of data uploaded every month.
It seems as though Google poured money into Youtube for about a decade and only turned it profitable recently; which is ridiculously unfair when it comes to competition. No one else (other than huge companies like Microsoft/Amazon/Apple) can afford to do that.
Basically I made this comment to say I disagree that Youtube doesn't cost much to run; even for Google I'm sure it is really expensive to host tons of data and constantly stream it everywhere for free.
Rumble is currently working on its own cloud: https://www.rumble.cloud/