| I agree but also if Google didn't host those old videos, you wouldn't be able to watch them unless you have downloaded them and stored on some long term storage solution. One could also say that YouTube is part of the cultural heritage of the world, and since Google or rather Alphabet had a money printing machine, this content should be freely available to anyone. Recently they've pushed annoying in page ads on my Adsense sites, despite them being disabled.
Soon I'll have to either add a cookie wall or not have ads served in EMEA & UK. Alphabet knows that its business model is in danger.
Closed off spaces like Facebook or Discord are where people hang out.
The forum culture has been condensed into Reddit and a few minor forums.
Blogs are all SEO trash with content like the 7 best xyz you never knew existed or "he went out into the garden and then he saw..." In any case, there are too many ads on YouTube and I'm not paying, especially because they make it hard to download the content off YouTube, actively hindering, slowing yt-dl (I know other solutions exist, cat mouse game).
So yeah, they know of the value of that content. The real question is, why is egress so expensive? |
Frankly, if Google would be taking it down, or start deleting all that old content where copyright ownership is unclear, we would lose one of the biggest archived on video history.
A radical way would be to split YouTube into the "archives" part, run by a non-profit, and the "new videos where content creators are paid" commercial site.
I don't think egress is expensive. After all, with a couple of exceptions they have neutral peerings with pretty much any ISP on this planet. And the ~$30B of revenue should be more than enough to handle storage and traffic cost.
AFAIK Google does not list the actual profits that YouTube makes, but I'd assume it's a very very profitable business - again, if you compare this to Netflix, Disney+ etc, who all have producing original content as the highest cost item on their balance sheets, they must be a pretty nice position.
So anyway, as said: I am willing to pay for original content that YouTube themselves are paying for. But I am not willing to pay for anything that was and is provided for free to them.