Re:How much is YouTube worth today?
by vl on Sunday November 22, 2020 @03:36PM
(#25180825)
Also it’s interesting that Google is the only company (except, perhaps, Amazon), that could pull off running and growing YT. YT is strongly subsidized by getting cost reduction by using shared Google infrastructure. Also billions of dollars where spent for years to support YT without return in sight. Probably the longest, or, at least, biggest, “eventually we’ll corner the market and make it profitable” scheme.
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Yeah. My impression from the outside:
It's largely been the advertising people/tech that has made Youtube profitable. Not infrastructure effectiveness. (Sure, I imagine infra cost effectiveness was very important during a few key growth years pre-acquisition.)
My point is more nuanced:
YT is worth so much because it is a monopoly. To make it monopoly it is today, Google had to have: extremely deep pockets, efficient infrastructure. Very few other companies could have accomplished that.
AIUI, they had to sell. There was no way they could build out the needed infra to maintain the growth rate another year, let alone pay for it.
I thought they had to sell YT because they were starting to get sued into the ground because it was mainly hosting SNL and South Park clips at the time