The results of this study can be explained by 2 plausible hypotheses:
* Users have been trained to expect that if a random site spins the beach ball for a few seconds it's unlikely to get better. Akamai customers are a mixed set of smaller web sites, and these often have an "eternal progress meter" as failure mode of video players.
* Viewers in the Akamai mix are impatient because content includes a lot of emailed links, and ancillary (eg news article related) content
Neither of these would apply to Netflix and Youtube
* Users have been trained to expect that if a random site spins the beach ball for a few seconds it's unlikely to get better. Akamai customers are a mixed set of smaller web sites, and these often have an "eternal progress meter" as failure mode of video players.
* Viewers in the Akamai mix are impatient because content includes a lot of emailed links, and ancillary (eg news article related) content
Neither of these would apply to Netflix and Youtube