It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere.
Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules. Nobody asked them to kill their competitors. Besides, I'm not really concerned for them. It's not like they are struggling.
> It's more complicated than that because of the network effect. Few people host their videos elsewhere.
Yes, but these things are far from essential. Most of YouTube is entertainment, which is as fungible as it gets, and what isn't (for example repair tutorials) can usually be solved by buying repair guides or hiring professionals. There are alternatives. You might not like them, but they exist.
> Google did this to themselves and they are the one imposing everybody to play by their rules.
This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free".
> Nobody asked them to kill their competitors.
YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source.
> YouTube has competition in all of its areas. They might be the leader, but they are not the singular source.
This is like saying Microsoft didn't have a monopoly on the PC market in the 90s because Apple had 5% of the market. They only feel comfortable designing serious limitations in MV3 because chrome owns 90% of the browser landscape.
> This is really peak absurdity. "Google made me use their service for free".
This is not absurd, they got to where they wanted through massive investor led subsidies and buying out their admittedly better competitor (remember google video?) What they performed on the on-demand video market was a form of predatory dumping, and when all the competition was gone they used that position as well as other positions to extract "value" and cash out.
Only if we ignore facts. Chrome only has a 64% market share, not 90%. Nobody has ever dominated a consumer tech market in the same way that Microsoft dominated the 90s.
On top of that, YouTube is only one choice of many for user created videos. Sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all top 20 sites that host user created videos. A number of YouTube creators mirror their content to Nebula and other creator platforms. Twitch is yet another alternative and is likely more popular than YouTube’s live feature.
We also have to count every streaming video service from the legacy media companies and Netflix/Amazon/Apple as competition as well.
In the 90s you couldn’t complete basic computing tasks without Internet Explorer and Office. Even while fully admitting to YouTube’s relative dominance of its niche, the situation is not the same.
> Only if we ignore facts. Chrome only has a 64% market share, not 90%. Nobody has ever dominated a consumer tech market in the same way that Microsoft dominated the 90s.
I think that browser market share is just one facet of the power Chrome holds over the web. Open source development, w3c membership and committee assignments, leadership in the direction the web takes, should also be considered alongside how much Chrome is being used directly.
> On top of that, YouTube is only one choice of many for user created videos. Sites like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reddit are all top 20 sites that host user created videos.
These are primarily social media products, it's not easy or intended to use these services in the same way as you would use Youtube. Video is a "Feature".
> In the 90s you couldn’t complete basic computing tasks without Internet Explorer and Office. Even while fully admitting to YouTube’s relative dominance of its niche, the situation is not the same.
I think it's the spectre of this past that people recognize as being the inevitable conclusion of the enshittification process, which is why the alarm bells are sounding now.
While I feel like your arguments are absolutely sound in isolation, I personally don't know "how much dominance is too much dominance?" considering the stakes, and I would certainly rather be cautious. That said, what sort of act do you think is a "bridge too far" for Google to implement?
I have no sympathy for a company that operated at a loss for enough years to price out competitors to the point it was the only real game in town.
You kill competitors and now want to dictate the price (including attention) everyone pays to see user-generated content? Yeah no.
Got zero sympathy. None. You do not command my attention - a resource I am less and less willing to pay with these days.
If that results in YouTube becoming unsustainable and collapsing and something more sustainable emerging charging a price consumers are willing to pay? Well then that sounds acceptable.
If you went to the site and continued to use it, you consented. That’s how EULAs work.
Your consent was given by the fact that you directed your browser to interact with the service continually, if that’s something that you did.
You can’t say you didn’t consent to be searched if you walked into an airport. You can’t say you didn’t consent to be splashed with water if you got on the log flume ride. Your own ignorance or disagreement with the fact that you can get searched at an airport or wet on a lot flume ride isn’t really an excuse.
Comparison to real world situations when the trigger is physical presence are not a good example exactly because they require physical presence, something unachievable in the virtual world of software and internet.
