I mean, they didn’t get greedy, as far as everyone knows they are losing a ton of money (at least if you can extrapolate anytbing from the fact that twitch is massively unprofitable)
Comment on YouTube is slowing down for users with ad blockers in new wave
NocturnalEngineer@lemmy.world 1 year agoI never had an issue with YT’s 1-2 skipable ads at the beginning, or even the banner ad. But they got greedy.
The midrolls and the unskipable ads was the trigger point for me.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 year ago
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Pretty sure YouTube has already been declared to be profitable. But frankly I’m pretty suspicious of claims of unprofitability for services being run for over a decade. Why would any for-profit company bankroll them if it wasn’t worth it? There has to be some creative accounting going on.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Doubt it, if it was profitable, they would be announcing that to everyone as loud as they could. Besides, if twitch is unprofitable, I doubt that google is in a much better situation
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wouldn’t apply Twitch’s situation to YouTube, IF it’s even true, because YouTube got a much wider reach and more advertising possibilities than gaming and somewhat related audiences.
It doesn’t seem to me a given that they’d boast about their success either. Because if they hide the situation the way they do, they can do this, turn to the customers saying “Welp, I guess this much is not enough. Gotta put more ads on it and raise prices 🤷”. It’s easier to placate the users if they are convinced it is inevitable. I imagine you are considering of what investors might think if products are said to be unprofitable, but overall Google/Alphabet still gets tens of billions in clean profits every year.
Most of all, again, if this is such a money sink that in over a decade they couldn’t figure out how to make money of it, why would they still keep at it? Why wouldn’t they sell it off or close it? If I assume they are honest about unprofitability, as much as I doubt it, then they must be getting something else from it that is equally valuable as raw money. Maybe it’s user data. Maybe it’s the social clout of controlling a major media platform. But it has to be worth it to them or they wouldn’t be hosting it. It wouldn’t make sense.
But personally I just think they are lying about unprofitability, including Twitch. It’s just a convenient excuse for layoffs and price hikes. It’s not like they are going to show everyone their full balance sheets.
takeda@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That was the initially when YouTube was created. Everyone knows that Google has no problem cancelling anything that’s not profitable.
Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 1 year ago
If it was profitable, then why did google stop posting the financial statistics for YouTube
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah and I wouldn’t even mind like 5 minutes of ads at the beginning compared to randomly dispersed in the middle
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Oh sure, let me watch 5 MINUTES before watching a 7min clip.
Dedicated 5min are only marginally justified if the content is >60 minutes in length.PopMyCop@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
Screw that much. I’ll give them 1 second per 5 minutes of video.
SeaJ@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I was fine with even having a couple very short unskippable ads every other video. Now it is all of them with one in the middle of videos longer than 5 minutes. And then of course the content creator has to put in an ad because YouTube does not pay shit for views.