[echelon]

As I understand it, YouTube remains unprofitable to this date. What game is Google playing at here? Creators are unhappy with the strong arming, users are displeased with the ads and the comments and, well, everything. Parents are unhappy with the creepy videos targeting children. YouTube music is a travesty and is likely to fail like all the other half-baked Google products. YouTube gaming... is dead. Now they're getting fined for something they could have easily avoided.

What in the hell is Google doing, and why do they suck at this so bad? I can imagine so many better product experiences. Why can't they get their act together?

[avocado4]

> As I understand it, YouTube remains unprofitable to this date.

Source?

[echelon]

Nothing recent, but Google does not disclose figures from YouTube.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/viewers-dont-add-up-to-profit-f...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fortune.com/2016/10/18/youtube-... (not sure how to un-ampify this)

[imihai1988]

Tangential, you need to click the (i) and then click the actual url ( although they didn't actually mark it as a hyperlink). Amp is getting more and more frustrating w/ each iteration.

[mav3rick]

Yeah right. The competition is doing so well. Try running a video hosting service within the frameworks of the law. It's still the most popular service by a longshot. Classic HN being delusional again.

[dang]

Please don't break the site guidelines by snarking and calling names.

Posturing above the rest of the community isn't helpful either. If you're posting here, you're as much "HN" as anyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[mav3rick]

Acknowledged.

[sexisfun]

Why is my account banned?

[dang]

I'm not sure, but if you email us we can probably sort it out.

[echelon]

Reddit, Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Twitch

Edit: Facebook, Twitter

[pjc50]

None of those compete directly with user-uploaded content of arbitrary length. Vimeo and Dailymotion are the nearest competitors.

[8note]

doesn't Facebook do that?

[yoz-y]

Do people go to Facebook directly to just watch video from their non-friends? Is it even possible? Genuinely asking, I haven’t used FB for quite some time.

[krapp]

Yes, people go to Facebook to watch videos.

However, I think it's too restrictive to only consider platforms to be competitors of Youtube only when the use case is analogous, and it's incorrect to imply that Facebook can only be competing with Youtube if their users exclusively use it to watch videos.

Any platform that supports video streaming is potentially competing against Youtube. The specific use case of the platform is irrelevant, only scale and mindshare matter - the degree to which people spend time there rather than on Youtube.

[pjc50]

The platform does, in theory, although until recently it was limited to 45 minute videos OR a livestream.

Culturally, it doesn't. There aren't famous "facebookers". It doesn't even support playlists.

[ekianjo]

You do realise that Disney, HBO and Netflix are one-way distributors right? They don't even belong in that list.

[DanBC]

We're talking about monetised, profitable, video content aimed at children.

These other companies can manage it.

YouTube can't, but importantly YouTube wants it both ways - they want to include content that targets children without providing any of the protection that parents expect.

And that expectation isn't unreasonable. We don't want parents who helicopter every waking hour of their children's lives, we want to give parents some freedoms to allow their children to explore and grow.

[hackinthebochs]

>we want to give parents some freedoms to allow their children to explore and grow.

But there's no reason to include youtube in that, just like you (presumably) don't include the broader internet in that.

[mav3rick]

Others have clarified how those products are different and not even close to YouTube.