TL;DR: I don't like the idea of having to pay for watching video, and am using the example of a small child to engender sympathy.
The simple fact of the matter is that running YouTube costs money, and there's nothing wrong with making users pay for that in the form of ads. You don't want your sister to have to deal with that? Totally understandable. Maybe there should be some kind of kid-friendly video network that only shows appropriate videos (and appropriate comments)? I imagine a lot of parents would pay a monthly fee for access to that, and bypass advertising entirely.
As I often think when I read posts like this on Hacker News: you've just identified a market and a window of opportunity. Stop complaining and get working.
It's not a sense of entitlement he's expressing. It's being an advocate of users.
Ads are by definition someone asking the world, "who wants what we can provide?" The value is often for the person asking, rather than the person listening. Most of the time, ads rarely match up the two parties well, and as a result, the company tries its damn hardest to put askers everywhere listeners are listening. The result making for a sub-par user experience.
Often times in a company's search for revenue, it forgets about the end-user, and justify unpleasant user experiences with "Well, we gotta make money somehow." One can say, "well, if you don't like it, then leave." When users have a first chance to do so, they will, and then who will you advertise to?
The exception are ads in search, where the person asking (advertiser) is really well matched with the person listening (searcher). Google used restraint when it came to ads. It could have completely blasted the end user with flashy banner ads which were typical when it first started. However, it looked out for basic user value and user experience first. It is possible to serve ads, and have a good user experience.
The OP never was against paying for a simplified YouTube. It's not against YouTube making money. But it is against losing sight of the basic value of watching videos. It's like if you once wrote control tower software, and added bells and whistles to the point where you're not able to land planes anymore.
Once again, it's advocate for the basic value for the end user. Sometimes, when adding all the new-fangled stuff, we might lose sight of the basic value. That's what he's getting at.
wow let's be more self entitled. it's actually the channel owners that decide to put ads on their channels. so people spend hours, days maybe months creating content and ask users to watch a small ad in return. If the end user then subscription and pay to watch should be a successful model but it's been proven that it doesn't work
Once again, OP and myself aren't against channel owners putting up ads to make money. We aren't against ad supported video services. However, we are ruining user-experiences and basic value add while searching for an ad-based revenue stream. As google has demonstrated with search, there are cases where you can make money from ads and still have a good user experience. How does advocating this philosophy imply that I want more than I rightfully and fairly should get?
When you don't read to understand the main point, and instead allow yourself to react to a knee-jerk reaction of your own sensibilities, you miss out from really hearing others.
it sounds like you have figured out a way to display ads to monetize video that still offers a good user experience better than whats available now. You sir have a billion dollar idea, why aren't you implementing it.
A parallel thought to the sibling poster - maybe the OP wouldn't mind paying money directly to get rid of ads and Google+ integration. Just because he doesn't want to "pay" in the form of ads doesn't mean he's opposed to paying altogether. I for one would love to pay e.g. Facebook a few dollars per week if it would make the experience less shitty (for me, my sisters seem to be fine with digital crap).
Yeahh Youtube is business no other thing, All us viewed TV with ads all life and now stay here, share knowledge and opinions. If you have all Wallstreet over your shoulders, sure you search the form to increase the revenue. For other side if you don't want to pay viewing the ads, simply install adblock plus.
I'm hardly an anti-tax guy, but I can think of no valid reason why should low bandwidth subsidize high bandwidth users, coupled with eliminating competition.
For service providers, profit based has been working fine to drive down prices, and I have no reason to believe that's a real impediment for any new competitor.
A kid-friendly, ad-free video network is a great idea.
Unfortunately GooTube's dominant, almost monopoly incumbent position in short videos makes it hard for others to offer such a service with a competitive video selection.
And while Google's strategic priority is fattening their marketing dossiers on everyone, and offering 'free'/subsidized loss-leader products as a moat around their search monopoly, it's unlikely Google would offer such a niche service.
Maybe someone could make it work, inside or outside the Googleplex, but in the meantime a 'complaining' blog post like this is perfectly appropriate and valuable, explaining a troubling trend and unmet need.
"Unfortunately GooTube's dominant, almost monopoly incumbent position in short videos makes it hard for others to offer such a service with a competitive video selection."
Complete bullshit. Google does not exclusively own the video on Youtube. There is either a market for an ad-free, kid-friendly for-pay video subscription service, or there isn't. Google's incumbent position doesn't come into it at all.
YouTube has all the mindshare -- it is synonymous with short video hosting for most people. It's a free offering that's been improved with Google's deep pockets and infrastructure. Its gigantic existing 'back catalog' provides deep lock-in -- for both uploaders and fans of existing material/watchlists. Its video results even seem to be favored in Google search, and immune to the 'DMCA notification volume penalty' Google recently announced would be affecting other sites.
Any economist (like say the PhDs on Google's staff) could explain there are large returns to scale, lock-in effects, and cross-subsidization and product tie-ins affecting this market, and GooTube is way out in front. It doesn't reduce to a binary "either there's a market... or not" and it's absurd to claim "Google's incumbent position doesn't come into it at all". The existing offerings by incumbents with brand, scale, contractual agreements, Android integration, and specific preferred models they're defending absolutely matter.
Let's call the hypothetical ad-free subscription kid service 'KidTube'. I'm not saying it'd necessarily be impossible to launch, just made a lot harder by YouTube's dominance.
The KidTube strategy would have to assume Google's resistance to easy migration of YouTube videos, for example via a bulk side-loading facility, even if the original uploaders wanted them reused. KidTube would also have to assume that if they got scale and traction, they would face a free competitor subsidized by Google's other revenues and product/promotional tie-ins. (For example, does your Google+ profile indicate you have children? Here's a targeted ad for our own kid service, the only one with all the videos your child already loves! All they have to do is create a juvenile Google+ profile! Please be sure to enter their real full name and birthdate.)
I like how you can not write a single sentence in that message without accusing google of being the devil incarnate that eat babies. That makes the whole thing unreadable.
YouTube is the dominant, almost monopoly provider of short video hosting/viewing. It would not, by its terms of use policies, let a competing subscription service reuse its videos.
Google's strategic priority is improving its marketing targeting capabilities. This is widely understood by Google observers, and sometimes explicitly stated by Google itself, as the motivation behind the deep "Google+" integration across all services, and requirements like the 'real names' policies.
Google has a de facto monopoly in search and search-linked advertising: the largest index, the largest audience, the largest physical plant in a industry which has returns to scale, the largest broker position in the two-sided advertising auction markets. This gives them super-normal margins in that core business. Profits from that core business are used to subsidize lots of other adjacent businesses at a loss.
None of this accuses them of evil motives or actions. Their strategy has generally been legal and effective; other competent managers would be doing much the same thing provided with the same starting conditions and competencies.
Still, we should be able to honestly recognize their market power and strategies for what they are. Google's overwhemingly dominant position and preference for advertising/"sell-the-audience" models are facts about the terrain. These facts enable certain opportunities and preclude others. Projecting some sort of Manichean good/evil dimension onto the situation clouds rather than helps business analysis.
The simple fact of the matter is that running YouTube costs money, and there's nothing wrong with making users pay for that in the form of ads. You don't want your sister to have to deal with that? Totally understandable. Maybe there should be some kind of kid-friendly video network that only shows appropriate videos (and appropriate comments)? I imagine a lot of parents would pay a monthly fee for access to that, and bypass advertising entirely.
As I often think when I read posts like this on Hacker News: you've just identified a market and a window of opportunity. Stop complaining and get working.