[redserk]

In fairness, there’s also the misguided assumption that services cost nothing to host and ad revenue cannot possibly offset the costs.

[scbzzzzz]

Yes ad-revenue offsets , I want to point out, premise it self is wrong. their business model itself is not sustainable (as per my understanding)with present free +ads/paid model. you are just subsidizing their bad decisions forgoing your privacy/time/money.

even with ads, hosting free video content is not sustainable. just look at the trajectory, internet users are stagnating, time of a day is limited. which means all users watch-time is constant. it is profitable now, but not forever(if above premise is true)

but youtube has to host all the data since its inception, and new content is added everyday. (maintenance cost increases day by day + but income is stagnated)

only way out is to charge/limit content creators. or else it will be (never ending increase of number of ads/price increase).

[cat_theorist]

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/3/21121207/youtube-google-al...

YouTube us very profitable. It’s just that they want even more and they believe forcing users to turn off their adblockers will get them there. Smells monopolistic to me.

[jsnell]

Your link says nothing about the profitability of YouTube, just about the revenue.

[cat_theorist]

They don’t publish that number, but you know it’s in the billions.

Here’s alphabet’s gross income (155b USD): https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/GOOG/financials/annua...

And here’s an estimate of YT’s profit margin: https://mannhowie.com/youtube-valuation#youtube-profit-margi...

My point wasn’t about the specific number, it was a qualitative one: people in this thread claim that YT needs to kill Adblockers to pay for the service and survive. They don’t. They’re already making billions without crippling web browsers to disable Adblockers.

[jsnell]

I certainly don't know that their profit is in the billions. Neither do you, unless you're a high level Google executive.

The source you have for estimating the profit margin is just total guesswork. It's estimating the costs purely by taking the operating costs of other companies with different business as a percentage of their revenue, and then applying that same percentage to YouTube. That's an absurd methodology. You could just apply it to any business and show they're profitable.

(As an example, for years AWS was profitable and GCP wasn't. But applying the methodology from your link would have resulted in the belief that GCP was wildly profitable. And those business were far more similar to each other than Netflix and YouTube are!)

Also, you are making a point about a specific number: You are claiming the profit is greater than 0. It could be true! It could also not be true. We just don't know.

[Goronmon]

In fairness, there’s also the misguided assumption that services cost nothing to host and ad revenue cannot possibly offset the costs.

No see, you can't bring that up because they already called that reason "tiring". Thus it is invalid now and you need to come up with a different one.

[toastercat]

Disregarding your sarcasm, I did not call it tiring, and I've also never seen anyone make that misguided assumption.

[the_sleaze9]

4. Without ads, YouTube cannot exist

In my view, you did call it tiring and were thereby stating that you had seen someone make that assumption.

[toastercat]

Saying "without ads, YouTube cannot exist" is not the same thing as saying "services cost nothing to host" at least in my view.

[bluescrn]

Google aren't exactly a struggling small business

[toastercat]

I have never met anyone (or seen a comment on HN) that has purported that. Sorry, but this seems like a strawman.

[redserk]

> Every HN thread about YouTube and ads, we see the same ads/tracking/Google apologist fallacies:

If I'm understanding your comment in good faith, it appears to be dismissing a number of viewpoints that don't advocate for adblocking and labeling them as "apologist".

The intent of my comment is to call out that there are a number of viewpoints that do not consider the costs of running services and equate adblock as a binary "good" vs "evil".

[toastercat]

My intention wasn't to dismiss viewpoints, my intention was to highlight what I view as fallacious arguments.

I can agree that there are those who do not consider the costs of running services, but I have never seen someone suggest that services "cost nothing to host".