I'd love an actually decent competitor to Youtube.

I mean, I want the improvement in quality that usually comes with competition, but I don't actually want there to be competition. Does anyone really relish the idea of having to search multiple sites for a given video because you don't know or can't remember which one it's on, and having to have an account and different set of uploader subscriptions for Youtube A, B and C? And remember where the subscribe button is on A vs. B and does C support changing video speed or not? etc. Just one platform is a massive, MASSIVE perk of the current system.

Yeah, just like you don't really want to have more than one company hosting text on the web. Imagine the mess it would be if there were more than one company hosting text on the web! It's a massive perk of the current system that all text that is published on the web is hosted at the web hosting company!

But, quite seriously, I think we have a massive problem on our hands if even people who frequent hacker news just aren't aware of the concepts of standards and interoperability anymore, that a monopoly seems to be perceived as the only way to achieve integration at the user experience level.

Want to have more than one TV channel with a common user interface? Obviously, all TV channels need to be owned by one company!

Want to have more than one appliance with a common electricity supply infrastructure? Obviously, all appliances need to be provided by the one electricity supplier!

Want to have more than one newspaper in the same language and alphabet? Obviously, all newspapers and their common language and alphabet need to be owned by one company!

Want people all around the planet to be able to talk to each other remotely? Obviously, all telephones and telephone networks need to be owned and operated by one company!

I'd really like to understand how this thinking managed to take hold, given that it seems to be so obviously fallacious to me.

Indeed.

Really I want a decentralised system where I have my cake and eat it too, with a single mechanism for accessing my content while also not giving a single company control over and profit from the entire industry.

Oh, and this hypothetical decentralised system has to, well, not completely suck. Which means it's never going to happen.

Maybe there could be a search engine that finds videos on all video sites, and shows them according to some well-tested algorithm, without any bias? Oh, but the owners of such a search engine would need to be entirely neutral and unbiased. For instance, they should not also be owners of a video site that they would like to promote.

It's been a long time since the USA Justice Department went after a company for having a vertical monopoly, but this is a reminder of why vertical monopolies can inhibit innovation, just as much as horizontal ones.

Remember RSS feeds? :).

Good point. I split the eBooks I buy between Kindle, Google Books, and Apple iBooks. I do this to not put all my digital purchases in one basket, support competition, and sometimes take advantage of sales. It is a nuisance.

But, even though you make a good point, I disagree in the sense that I would like to see other services like Vimeo gain market share to balance things out. Trouble is, it is difficult for other services to compete with ‘free.’

It's as if twitch, amazon, and 5 million porn sites didn't exist.

Those aren't really Youtube though. I can go on youtube to listen to music or watch a video on rebuilding a carburetor self-published by some random guy, or catch a movie trailer, or even publish my own videos.

You can get money directly from the viewers with twitch, therefore making it far superior than YouTube. The idea that YouTube is monopoly because people are to afraid of moving to other options is silly

You can get money directly from viewers on youtube too.

https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2017/09/a-new-way-to...

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7277005

Twitch is a video gaming streaming service.

YouTube is a general video service.

Twitch isn't superior.

Vimeo?

Vimeo isn't, and doesn't want to be, a YouTube competitor.

Facebook and vid.me as well. And twitch for streaming.

Nobody is going to mention DailyMotion?

You've found a good competitor to Google search?

This question is loaded. Google does not index search results of other search providers and it never has, because it would create a really bad and potentially buggy user experience (Click through 10 search results to get the real link (if you don't go in a full loop!))

However if you search "Google Search Alternatives" on Google, it displays a large, pronounced box at the top, declaring "Here are 12 alternatives to escape your reliance on Google for all things search."

The poster above was claiming to not have trouble "finding a good competitor" to Google's services. I simply asked if they found one to Google's most synonymous service: search.

Bing at least claims to be. Is Bing enough worse that it isn't a usable alternative?

I've been daily-driving Bing for a few years now, and the only time I switch to Google is for searches on obscure programming errors. I've otherwise had no issues finding anything.

This is what killed Bing for me. I work at a .NET heavy company and it seemed like Bing was pushing (possibly not intentionally) MSDN and MS forums pretty hard. That generally was not where the answers to my questions were, and after a while I just gave up on it.

I tried DDG for a while. Search results were pretty good for me (and w! so! etc are nice), but google is so much faster. That takes capital investment, for local centers around the world. I'll try bing for a while.

I used it for 3 weeks in china, it is really bad compared to google imo. I could not wait to switch back.

DuckDuckGo

Somehow, I doubt Google is worrying about the next move that DuckDuckGo will make in competition with them.

Google names DuckDuckGo as their competitor. I think it's taken seriously.

Google has an incentive to name competitors because they have a monopoly. Which regulators like to observe.

Microsoft did the same when they were investigated.

It’s not about your google app use. The ad industry in the US is about 150 billion. Google is pulling about 90 billion in ad revenue.