[dragonwriter]

> Without the content creators youtube is worthless

Without ads YouTube is worthless to Google. Nonmonetized content isn't bringing revenue to Google. Sure, it has an indirect benefit in making YouTube a more attractive place to post monetized content, by it's not like creators get nothing out of it (which is why they post to YouTube rather than arranging other hosting, which is certainly valuable if less likely to be free and also likely to have less reach.)

[autoexec]

> Without ads YouTube is worthless to Google. Nonmonetized content isn't bringing revenue to Google. S

Google gets huge volumes of valuable data with nearly every video that's uploaded. Google knows things like who the uploader is, what kind of people are in their home and their approximate ages, what clothes they wear, what products they buy, what pets they own, what interests they have.

They also get data on every visitor who views those videos, such as what their interests are or where/when/how often they watched a video or channel. All of that data makes their non-youtube ads more valuable because they can offer the guy watching videos on how to train a puppy dog food ads instead of ads for horse saddles. Youtube doesn't need ads to be a powerful tool for surveillance and data collection capable of bringing google revenue.

I agree that youtubers are getting something out of it too, mostly easier exposure and very simple hosting, but google needs content more than it needs one more place to shove their ads in our faces since much of the rest of the internet is happy to let google put their ads on their own websites.

[true_religion]

Too often, people reach towards some abstract methodology like data collection to explain Googles actions.

Why do it in this case? They directly make money from selling ad space. Any data on watching is used directly to sell more ad space and gain more money.

It’s a closed loop. This is how all Google properties operate. Not having ads would be a death knell for YouTube.

[scarejunba]

You're overestimating the value of this data. It is not worth that much.

[autoexec]

You underestimate the value of data. Our personal data is what has allowed google to become what they are today. it's worth so much that companies are grabbing up as much as they possibly can and the data brokers who are selling and buying it are a multi-billion dollar industry

[scarejunba]

Are you in the programmatic advertising business? I am, and have been for about half a decade, and I'm confident you valuing this incorrectly. As a matter of fact, I was at one such data company until recently.