What a waste of resources. Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet and allocating man-hours towards artificially worsening the experience for your userbase in order to blackmail them into paying you, and giving them back what they had in the first place.
At least this is a loosing game for Google, since this is client side behaviour.
They may have been extremely competent at this, but if they decided to spend years of their relatively short ephemeral life on such a useless project, perhaps they weren’t the best at the time. Perhaps they needed money and were focusing on family life, I don’t know. Who I am to judge? I’m judging though.
It's a testament to the health of our free markets and competition that the winning move here is to spend a lot of time and money making your product worse for the average person.
While I'm not pro YouTube, I think it's fine for companies to decide how to monetise their product, including things which were originally free. If you don't like free services, stop using them
If a company wants to offer its service as a loss-leader to outlast its competitors who offered their services at a cost its users were willing to pay, then that company has no room to complain if people don't want to pay the last-game-in-town's jacked-up rates!
There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.
They're removing functionality that you already heave built into your browser in order to force you to pay to get that functionality back.
That's not monetization that's exploitation.
Would you feel the same if your phone suddenly updated so that your camera records in half quality unless you start paying monthly? It's their product, they can monetize it how they like.
I don't think it's fine for large companies to intentionally lose money to drive smaller competitors out of business. In fact, I think this practice should be illegal and that all who participated should be in jail.
Oh, I despise this tactic so much. It means the company has known from the start that they can't offer it for free in the long term, but decided to subsidize it in order to gain a dominant position and get rid of competition. This breaks the conditions needed for a free market dynamics to work. In other words, they win market share for reasons other than efficiency, quality, or innovation. That's why some forms of government subsidies are prohibited under certain agreements, for example. Some multinational corporations have annual revenues larger than the GDP of many countries and can easily subsidize negative pricing for years to undercut competitors, consolidate market share, and ultimately gain monopoly power.
Also, the company has hinted false promises to the customer, as it signals that they have developed a business model where they can offer something for free. For example a two-sided marketplace where one side gets something for free to attract users and the other side pays (as it profits form these users). Users can't know something isn't sustainable unless the company explicitly states it in some way (e.g. this is a limited time offer).
So from the user's perspective, this is a bait-and-switch tactic, where the company has used a free offer in order to manipulate the market.
> If you don't like free services, stop using them
If they don't like users using their service how they deem improper, ban them? they know what accounts are doing it... There is a reason for this cat and mouse, and its not ending with youtube banning people.
A lot of the current issues i see with it, is that it is treated like the go to service for video hosting...
Just consider image hosting... If i see an image in a thread and click it (much like people will do with youtube urls), and block the ad that was on the hosted site, is there this much uproar about it? That image hosting site might charge 5$ to do what an adblocker already does... If they wanna lock that up? actually lock it up, and remove the "service" portion of the business, otherwise I don't see any legs to stand on here.
Service in my eyes here, is a public service. This is a company posing as a public service, and occasionally deciding it hates how a % of the public is using their service. So they hand them a 10$ a month ticket that they pretend is required, but they will never take action on users who dont pay that ticket.
Maybe ads-as-business-model is like political ideology - it is not a human universal but must adapt to the place: for instance collectivism over individualism in East Asia, theocratic conservatism over democracy in Afghanistan -- maybe ads as business model is despicable to some regions, but accepted in others? Albania it's apparently illegal for YouTube to serve ads?
Agreed. I was leaving the mall with lots of great goods I had found, but then the guard stopped me and told me I was stealing! Imagine paying that guy a salary just to blackmail me into paying them! This is an outrage.
> Imagine employing some of the most brilliant engineers on the planet
I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it should
also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be ashamed
for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...
Whataboutism is just fascinating. How myopic must your world view be that when you see one bad thing, you immediately try to justify it by pointing out another bad thing?
GP did not say that just because you work at a massive company you are brilliant. Nor did they say just working at Google makes you brilliant.
The irony of your comment of accusing them of using fallacious rhetoric, is that your reply uses one of the most common fallacies of all: strawman fallacy
slvng|1 month ago
bpavuk|1 month ago
a) don't care
b) were desperate enough at the time, then, like that damn videogame, it sucked him in
it's too easy to get carried away by sheer technical complexity of optimization tasks, even if you are optimizing for bad.
hosteur|1 month ago
speedgoose|1 month ago
Buttons840|1 month ago
Ampersander|1 month ago
stavros|1 month ago
This is where their most brilliant engineers have bested you, because they control the client too.
bpavuk|1 month ago
jy14898|1 month ago
rockskon|1 month ago
There is no moral high-ground for YouTube to take here.
reddalo|1 month ago
Problem is, there's no real alternative for YouTube. It's a monopoly.
estimator7292|1 month ago
That's not monetization that's exploitation.
Would you feel the same if your phone suddenly updated so that your camera records in half quality unless you start paying monthly? It's their product, they can monetize it how they like.
patrick451|1 month ago
zigzag312|1 month ago
Oh, I despise this tactic so much. It means the company has known from the start that they can't offer it for free in the long term, but decided to subsidize it in order to gain a dominant position and get rid of competition. This breaks the conditions needed for a free market dynamics to work. In other words, they win market share for reasons other than efficiency, quality, or innovation. That's why some forms of government subsidies are prohibited under certain agreements, for example. Some multinational corporations have annual revenues larger than the GDP of many countries and can easily subsidize negative pricing for years to undercut competitors, consolidate market share, and ultimately gain monopoly power.
Also, the company has hinted false promises to the customer, as it signals that they have developed a business model where they can offer something for free. For example a two-sided marketplace where one side gets something for free to attract users and the other side pays (as it profits form these users). Users can't know something isn't sustainable unless the company explicitly states it in some way (e.g. this is a limited time offer).
So from the user's perspective, this is a bait-and-switch tactic, where the company has used a free offer in order to manipulate the market.
sidrag22|1 month ago
If they don't like users using their service how they deem improper, ban them? they know what accounts are doing it... There is a reason for this cat and mouse, and its not ending with youtube banning people.
A lot of the current issues i see with it, is that it is treated like the go to service for video hosting...
Just consider image hosting... If i see an image in a thread and click it (much like people will do with youtube urls), and block the ad that was on the hosted site, is there this much uproar about it? That image hosting site might charge 5$ to do what an adblocker already does... If they wanna lock that up? actually lock it up, and remove the "service" portion of the business, otherwise I don't see any legs to stand on here.
Service in my eyes here, is a public service. This is a company posing as a public service, and occasionally deciding it hates how a % of the public is using their service. So they hand them a 10$ a month ticket that they pretend is required, but they will never take action on users who dont pay that ticket.
tjpnz|1 month ago
deaux|1 month ago
keepamovin|1 month ago
isthatafact|1 month ago
I would hope most people anywhere would see that as a bad thing, especially given the scams and harms that ads are pushing.
I am not sure the best way to improve things, but anyone should be able to live a normal day of life without being forced to see any advertisement.
AlienRobot|1 month ago
shevy-java|1 month ago
I am not sure those who work at Google are all brilliant - but it should also not matter, because they support Evil here. They should be ashamed for working for Evil. Guess if the money is right ...
tjpnz|1 month ago
throwaway132448|1 month ago
latexr|1 month ago
Maybe we should stop with that tired fallacious rhetoric? Just because you work at a massive company doesn’t make you “brilliant”.
freedomben|1 month ago
The irony of your comment of accusing them of using fallacious rhetoric, is that your reply uses one of the most common fallacies of all: strawman fallacy
testfrequency|1 month ago
causalscience|1 month ago
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nikanj|1 month ago
anonymous908213|1 month ago
BrenBarn|1 month ago
saagarjha|1 month ago
realusername|1 month ago