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Comment by ramraj07 | Hacker News Reader

Or maybe consider this is a somewhat necessary evil for the service provided (free HD streaming of infinite amounts of video that also rewards creators in the most sustainable fashion for any social media platform). Bandwidth, storage and monetization isn’t free. What exactly do you want? A service that will spend their money to deliver arbitrary HD video on demand and lose money?

YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix and provides infinitely more value for the money at this point. Every single person I nonconsensually forced YouTube premium on has come back to thank me for doing so. The last time people were happy i techno-assaulted them was when I introduced them all to Dropbox a decade back.

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> Or maybe consider this is a somewhat necessary evil for the service provided

No.

Monetisation is needed, going to extremes is not. The quest for infinite growth has created these extremes, it is indeed to blame. User # is exhausted, now it's time for more $ per user. Profitability is not enough, more money needs to be made, and when imagination is lacking to find more business areas, you simply fuck up the users or customers of your products which have the biggest lock-in.

> What exactly do you want? A service that will spend their money to deliver arbitrary HD video on demand and lose money?

I'd probably want options instead of a singular proprietary garden, antithetical to the open web, where all content is hosted.

Just one example: I'd be fine with a service that respected my time and just had a list of sponsored links associated with the content of the video, but everything was in 480p-720p. Maybe that wouldn't be ideal for everyone, but that's how the web was supposed to work: lots of approaches, only unified by consensus-derived protocols.

I’m ok giving Google my money/data in exchange of this service. However they constantly increase it service over time : more functions, better quality, higher fps while I don’t need neither want it.

Nothing wrong with higher bandwidth enthusiasts but I won’t pay or see ads “for them”.

Google, give me a YT with price/ads adapting to the data consumption (plus some fix extra if needed), I’ll encourage everyone around me consuming “the right video with the right ad”

> YouTube premium exists, costs less than Netflix

My family just ditched YT premium because they upped the price to $22.99/month. Or Netflix subscription is $9.99.

You just compared a family YT plan to a single user Netflix plan. The single user plans are equivalent in cost as are the family plans.

That’s fair, I was comparing the prices I was paying.

That said, as of this writing Netflix’s premium plan is $19.99/m. YouTube’s is $22.99. While they are comparable, they are not equivalent.

Let me see, endless entertainment plus education vs another documentary glorifying a serial killer or the lost continent of Atlantis?

Let me see, paid endless entertainment plus education or ad-blocked endless entertainment plus education?

I've seen people on here complain about YouTube's ads without any will to consider the need to buy premium at all.

However this is different, this is going to absolute extremes. Pause screen ads is just absolutely ridiculous. This is about inching out every last little bit of engagement from the user as possible.

I wouldn't say necessary, but I also don't think it's unreasonable. They're simply doing what is in their interest to do.

YouTube generated about $30 billion in revenue last year. Google don't break out their operating or net numbers, but I'd be pretty confident that they are already quite profitable.

What is reasonably apparent though, is that their user growth is flattening [1], and thus their revenue also [2].

Trying to increase ARPU is the obvious move, as it was with search.

[1] https://infogram.com/youtube-users-1h1749vqe9nzl6z

[2] https://infogram.com/youtube-revenue-1hxj48pqyenmq2v

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