[tmpz22]

What's interesting is this generally doesn't happen with the federal government. You can always call someone, or go into an office somewhere, or find someone up the chain in municipal / local / state offices to get something solved. It may take a very long time, but it gets solved.

And that scales to at least 300 million users.

Google is apparently less competent then the federal government in that regard (granted Google can't print money, yet).

[Mirioron]

>Google is apparently less competent then the federal government in that regard (granted Google can't print money, yet).

Even if they could, they would randomly discontinue the money 3 years down the line.

But I think comparing Google and the government in this sense isn't quite appropriate. Google is trying to make a profit. They try to keep their costs low. Automating customer support is one of these things, even if this customer support is poor. I'm just not sure this will work out in the long run. People know Google has bad customer service and I'm sure this has limited them in some way. I'm also sure that it's going to limit them more on the future. Would you want to jump on board this new Google service if there's a good chance that the service might get discontinued or you might have trouble with your account and no way to get help? I think Amazon is a much better company to compare to. Amazon has somehow made it work. Their customer service is great and this means that people won't worry as much about trusting things to Amazon.

[myopenid]

Amazon has competitors, Google doesn't.

[allendoerfer]

The federal government has 330 million users and tax revenues of about $ 3.5 trillion, while YouTube has 2 billion active users and only $ 15 billion in revenue.

So $ 7.5 per user for YouTube, but $ 10600 per user for the US federal government.

Edit: If you only look at the number of channels, which is only 31 million, you are at $ 483 per channel for YouTube.

[dylan604]

But how long would it take for a human to look into an issue and apply human logic instead of the algorithm. 10 minutes? Also, what percentage of users actually need or request support? Everyone pays in, but very few use the service.

[username90]

Subtract all the costs of video hosting and development etc and you are left with almost nothing.

[justinclift]

References please. ;)