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by michaelt 2253 days ago
> made very few improvements to it,

Before the acquisition Youtube were getting their ass kicked about all the copyright violation on the site, they were losing money, they had no ad revenue sharing with video creators, they only supported low-resolution video, and only in an Adobe Flash player.

All of which changed after the acquisition.

I would agree, of course, that there's plenty wrong with Youtube these days, and the pace of innovation has dropped a lot.
2 comments
simcop2387 2253 days ago
> ... only in an Adobe Flash player

To be fair with this one, this was the only reasonable way to do video in a browser for a stupidly long time.

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Mirioron 2253 days ago
>they had no ad revenue sharing with video creators

This is the one point that makes YouTube so difficult to shake. The money is attractive to creators and YouTube offers the most money with the largest audience. YouTube themselves actually gets 45% of the revenue, while the creator gets 55%.

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dannyw 2253 days ago
70/30 sharing on the ad platform side is common. Take away that, and you have YouTube taking another 21% for hosting, engagement, and tooling.

It’s actually really cheap if you’re thinking about it.

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chii 2253 days ago
vimeo has a $55/month cost for 5T of videos. Most youtube channels that are businesses make way more than $55 per month, and youtube keeps way more than $55 of their ad revenue.

I dont think the major reason creators choose youtube because it's "cheap" - it aint. It's the only game in town where there's sufficient advertiser demand to pay out money. And youtube knows this, and thus, can charge the 45% split. The "free" aspect is also keeping out new competitors - the business moat is huge. There's a reason why microsoft or amazon isn't getting in the game.

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MaxBarraclough 2252 days ago
Advertiser demand may be part of it, but there's also discoverability.

Turning up around YouTube must be extremely valuable. If your content is only on Vimeo, your odds of being chosen by the mighty YouTube algorithm are 0%.

> microsoft or amazon isn't getting in the game

You're right really, and it's not really the same thing, but they do both offer free file-storage services capable of streaming video to the browser.

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