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Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

I would be more concerned about Google discontinuing the service

Wasn't this the concern with Amazon Kindle books? The mega-corporation would discontinue the service, and the media one had paid for would cease to be accessible?

Yes, indeed! However Google has historically shown that they are eager to shut down products, and the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs of distributing Kindle books. Competition makes this also less likely to succeed.

I think the concern is fundamentally the same, but the chances feel much higher, which makes it a bigger worry.

the costs of distributing Stadia games far outweigh the costs

Games are just another form of media. YouTube costs Google a ton of money. But the control over media, virality, discovery, and advertisement is worth it to them. So has it been for video. So it shall be for games.

YouTube is profitable and brought an estimated 15 billion in revenue for Google last year. It’s not operational because of some other motive, it’s operational because it’s successful.

The same can’t be said for this new business model. The entire point of the comment you’re replying to is that Google doesn’t have a good track record of letting products that don’t make them money live.

YouTube is profitable and brought an estimated 15 billion in revenue for Google last year.

Through ad revenue?

The entire point of the comment you’re replying to is that Google doesn’t have a good track record of letting products that don’t make them money live.

Not exactly. I thought the point of YouTube was to control media to control ad revenue. If Google is now directly makes ad revenue off of YouTube, that doesn't contradict my position. It means they're more successful and farther along than I was aware of.

Google bought YouTube when it already dominated the video sharing market. Stadia might not dominate the gaming market in a couple years. Google likes to kill products that don't consume all, at least, that's what it looks like to me.

Stadia strikes me as an end-run around the competition of Twitch game streaming. One way to beat the competition is to reduce the friction around your own offering. The big draw of Stadia is the reduced friction between streaming and gaming.

You can create a backup of all your Kindle books, and continue to read them even if Amazon's service disappears. The only thing you won't be able to do is download them again from Amazon's servers.

B&N discontinued their 1st gen "nook" devices like this, I believe.

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