The question is would it be so costly that YouTube's profitability would look significantly different, and at that point would Google want to keep running YouTube?

I'm not sure, but I don't think the answer is that it obviously won't materially change YouTube's profitability.

Well, it's better if they don't keep it running them.

They have a monopoly on search, that they use to censor any competing video hosting. If they go and start censoring their own service too, this is a very serious problem.

Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem. Its value is to dominate the video hosting market so that viable competitors can't rise up in its place. If Google can squeeze profit out, that's icing on the cake, but not the core reason why Google wants to hold on to Youtube.

If the profitability of Youtube is on the table, then so should be antitrust, and Google should not be allowed to own it.

> Youtube's value isn't as a profit center, but a way of keeping people inside Google's ad ecosystem.

Even more important from Google's point of view is it was the way to push Chrome to dominance. And a way to keep it there ahead of any potential competitors.

Which is valuable because of the data and ability to block ad blockers. That is, Google's ad ecosystem.

> it was the way to push Chrome to dominance.

How did YT push Chrome?

In 2009/2010 YouTube advertised Chrome as a better way to view YouTube videos pretty extensively. YouTube also is a moving target that other browsers have to hit (see also GoogleDocs.)

It's similar to how "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", only with YouTube and other browsers.

Microsoft abandoned their "not Chrome-based" Edge code base, despite the fact that it was significantly faster than Chrome on almost every other site, because of the way that YouTube does some layers. This "way" has no functional effect, but it does block certain optimizations, optimizations that Edge was using and Chrome still isn't.

Google optimizes YT for Chromium-based renderers. Or rather, Google pessimizes YT for other renderers.

Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded to it every hour. They'd need an army the size of all of Google, Apple and Facebook put together just to review it all.

How much of that remains if you don't review immediately, but when view count exceeds -- for example -- 100 views? I'd expect a dramatic drop from 30 000 hours.

If you want to be so successful as to become one of the premier public forums in society, don't start crying when you're held up to the standards and expectations of other public institutions. Google, go get ye that army of moderators.

Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings. It would make Youtube, or any service like it, financially impossible for anyone to run. So sure, I'm not saying we need Youtube, but what you're saying is we can't have it or anything like it.

> Employing that many people would likely cost in the region of Google's entire earnings.

It would cost 2.5% of their profits if they had an entire US workforce and every video needed to be viewed in its entirety.

I really appreciate YouTube's existence, but chances are a communal video streaming site that the entire world can trivially upload videos to should probably be a government run service if it exists at all.

There are a plethora of much more conservatively sized video uploading sites that vet and have specific contracts with their content producers.

> Youtube gets roughly 30,000 hours of content uploaded to it every hour. They

Clearly you wouldn't need to review all of it. You could use AI to identify things for review (as opposed to remove them), limit it to people with a number of downvotes or views. Hell, you could just pay people to handle the reviews/escalations/appeals.

Although, Google totally could afford it. It would cost less than 2.5% of their profits to pay US minimum wage to review every video.

> It would cost less than 2.5% of their profits to pay US minimum wage to review every video

So you think employing those hundreds of thousands of workers would incur no office space costs, no IT system costs, no management, no service staff, no HR, no payroll, no recruitment, no training. Wow. And your talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a business itself that needs to make money. Why does the rest of Google need to subsidise it?

> employing those hundreds of thousands of workers would incur no...

Well, my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year in the various IT/management/training. I would think you could have people working from home, so office/etc. costs would be minimal. But I also made them US based and reviewing every random cat video's full length that is only seen by 1 person. Some savings could be achieved.

> your talking about Google profits, but YouTube is a business itself that needs to make money. Why does the rest of Google need to subsidise it?

Okay, fine. YouTube could internally have added the costs of reviewing every video's full length with US based people in 2021 it would have only cut in half their increase in profit over 2020.

> my numbers do allow for a $50MM/year

That’s hilarious. The $50m was a rounding error you forgot to account for. Given a work force of several hundred thousand, that would just about pay for an office chair each, let alone any other equipment or infrastructure, or office space to put the chair in.

Less "forgot" and more "didn't care to". But, yes, specifically the rounding error.

I have no idea why minimum wage workers would get an office chair worth a grand, or whatever you're assuming. You can have people do the work from their own couches and phones.

For $50MM/year I could set up the infrastructure to manage the process.

They managed to pretty well identify when you are quietly singing some song and claim all revenue from your videos, I am sure they can handle basic bots.

Human moderators probably wouldn't have to intervene in most of it.