Opinions about YouTube may be mixed here on HN, but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined. It's a weird mix of a huge creator monetization network, a music channel, an education platform, a forever-store of niche content, and a utility.
It's also not a business that rested on it's laurels. It's easy to forget how novel creator monetization was when YouTube adopted it. They do a lot of active work to manage their creators, and now have grown into a music and podcast platform that is challenging Apple. To top it off, YouTube TV, despite costing just as much as cable, is objectively a good product.
Few products have the brand, the reach, monetization, and the endurance that YouTube has had within Google. And I know for a fact that this is in no small part due to the way it was managed.
I've probably watched tens of thousands of hours of YouTube at this point. Some of it sublime, some of it absurd, some of it critical for my work or my degree. I couldn't imagine a world without it.
RIP.
They've been way behind on adding standard features that their competitors see lots of benefit from. For example, YouTube was years late to the 'channel memberships' game despite the popularity of Twitch and Patreon. YouTube still lacks many of the popular streaming features from Twitch, and only relatively recently got around to adding stuff like polls. I can't think of any feature in the past decade that was a YouTube innovation rather than an innovation from competitors that was copied over years later.
Mixer is one of the best examples of this. MSFT paid hundreds of millions for exclusivity for some of the most popular streamers and people complimented how it felt much smoother than Twitch. But that wasn't enough to get off the ground for MS. Youtube is an even bigger behemoth to tackle.
But youtube's main services are free, so that's harder to pull off compared to stuff like Patreon. Offering exclusive videos probably doesn't outpace the ad revenue from "free" videos either (and if we're being frank, you're still bound to YT's rules. So you can't offer truly "extra" content free from censorship or copyright or whatnot.)
I was always critical of YouTube from the sort of technical perspective than just pure UX. The core product and the core UX are great and I'm even considering getting YouTube Premium because I use YouTube so much. All in all, YouTube was and still is internet phenomena and they definitely dominate internet video, imo one of the best internet product ever created.
However, I did try their YT Premium, for a while, and was incredibly disappointed in their UI.
I assume that the Premium UI was designed for people that use their free tier, but is very strange, to folks like me, who come from other paid services.
But I am likely not their target audience. I suppose that YT Premium does well.
Why?
Serious question, too. You can sideload clients that give you every single feature of YouTube Premium for free. Unless you're expressly lazy, like being taken advantage of or enjoy watching advertisements, there's really no excuse. YouTube Premium is the "I'm trapped in this place and you people have finally gotten me" fee - you can circument it all together by just, not using YouTube's software. Newpipe is must-have on Android, I'm certain something similar exists for iOS. I run SmartTube on my dirt-cheap Amazon FireTV and don't get a single ad when browsing. Subtotal is $0.00 for the installation and usage of Open Source software.
I use YouTube a lot, but between uBlock Origin and SponsorBlock (which I set-and-forget like 4 years ago) I don't have a single gripe with the experience. I hear people contemplate paying YouTube for a worse experience and it gives me hives. The content is on a server; you are making yourself miserable by acquiescing to a harmful client. Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to the Walled Garden.
It's about 2 things
1. the principle. You get something, you pay for it.
2. the practicality. Youtube cannot run on fumes. It needs to generate funds from somewhere
If everyone decides to not take premium, it only incentivises youtube to harvest your data for a profit (yes, they're already doing it but that's not the point). Premium immediately pays for the product, and provides Youtube with the cash to run it's servers and pay it's content creators.
Not to mention, premium is pretty darned good, provides almost all the features and functionality that are available through other clients.
The answer is the same to all these questions: because I’d rather not live in a world where everyone is a taker.
Yes, that’s me. I sometimes even pay other people to prepare meals and manufacture clothing for me!
I have YT Premium and it works perfectly on every device I have and I have never had to configure anything nor research anything to not see an ad. I only vaguely understand some of the phrases or words you are using (have no clue what a newpipe is, but kind of understand what sideloading) is. I do not care to ever fiddle with my devices, there are more important or at least gratifying things in this world then futzing around with and tweaking devices.
> Paying for YouTube Premium is your eternal reward for submission to the Walled Garden.
If this is the great battle you have chosen to wage with your precious, fleeting time on earth, by all means, go with God -- but a lot of people really don't give a damn about Walled Gardens.
In that weird era, (a) average home Internet connections became fast enough to support streaming video (with a healthy adoption growth rate), (b) the most widely deployed home recording device was likely still the VCR (digitizing analog video from cable to burn to DVD was a pain), (c) there was no "on demand" anything, as most media flowed over centrally-programmed cable or broadcast subscriptions, and (d) people capturing video on mobile devices was rare (first gen iPhone couldn't) but obviously a future growth area.
So early YouTube was literally unlike anything that came before -- watch a thing you want, whenever you want.
I remember uploading it from my Sony handcam, then editing it in Sony Vegas and exporting it to make sure it hits the required YT file upload limit.
Really most of the content that YouTube had available was material recorded off of broadcast/cable which was mostly not available otherwise unless you had recorded it or gotten it off a torrent.
Sadly, the copyright cartel swiftly attacked and all the regular people lost their rights. It seems like the lesson learned is that the copyright-owning corporations can't be trusted to play fairly or meet in the middle on fair use. We really need to just abolish copyright laws entirely.
>but it is objectively one of the most successful businesses in tech or media to emerge in the past 15 years. If it weren't buried inside Alphabet, Youtube would be worth on the order of $400 billion, more than Disney and Comcast combined.
it's very weird because "successful" doesn't mean "makes the most profit" here. It's undoubedtly a huge and challenging infrastructure to manage, but it apparently took Google over a decade to start being profitable. I don't know if that's some hollywood accounting or commodification to ads, but in many ways I feel like YT outspent the rest of the competition and in some ways stifled more efficient ways to deliver video content.
I feel a bit bad because it's clear YT has been turning the script for some time, and while Susan took a lot of that blame these wheels were turning long before she became CEO (and turn long after she stepped down). But that just shows why monopolies are bad. I do hope something better for creators takes over eventually.
> Whatever is here, is found elsewhere. But what is not here, is nowhere
More than 20,000 hours over at most 18 years is at least 3 hours per day on average. That’s a lot of watching.
Why on Earth would you want shorter videos? The best thing about YouTube is that it's one of the only places you can find quality medium-to-long-form content.
That's all due to changes by YouTube to reward length and frequency, which of course makes sense for maximizing their ad revenue. But the result is creators are incentivized to pump out 20-minute fluff videos, not well edited/written videos.
People on here complain about SEO sites being filled with meaningless garbage. That's what YouTube is starting to be. The difference is their search bar still works whereas Google's will only give you the garbage. Though I still get "such and such breaks down their career" even though I've never clicked on that.
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
What makes a business successful and what makes a good product are both highly subjective.
I would say it’s more a business that rests on its monopolization of the market. As a product there’s plenty I like about YouTube, but it dominated the market through the use of many highly anti-competitive strategies, and has what many would consider (and what may well be proven to be) an illegal monopoly.
You can’t deny its impact, but to give such high praise to the management seems rather misguided to me.
To name a few, Alphabet is currently being sued by the DoJ for illegally monopolising digital advertising technology. That technology, which directly integrates with youtube (and which you or I could not integrate with our own competing youtube-like product), is one of the key reasons that youtube has become as successful as it is.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...
They have also recently lost a lawsuit regarding the legality of their search monopoly, which likely also contributed to the success of youtube.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/5/24155520/judge-rules-on-us...
The way they leverage the OHA to ensure YouTube is shipped with every Android phone is also highly anti-competitive, and isn't too different from the IE case against Microsoft.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on...
The same concern exists in the smart TV market.
While it's not illegal (as far as I know), the practice of burning through billions of dollars until your competitors are gone and you have an unassailable market dominance is also certainly anti-competitive, and that really has been one of the other key ingredients in youtube's success.
None of these are management practices that I would consider worthy of congratulating.
Carriage dispute with Roku. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/08/roku-reaches-agreement-with-...
The personal side typically will center on emotional aspects of being human. However what you do with your intellect is also a major part of being human. And that part is most often expressed only in our professional lives.
Celebrating a job well done and an outsized impact is a good thing - and if I may, the most "human" of things to do?
RIP.
Who? Who has a negative opinion about YouTube? The occasional "My kids watch too much of it" != "mixed opinions" about the site in general.
Any time someone posts a YouTube link to a political discussion, it’s guaranteed to be the worst nonsense that pries on people who “do their own research.” (No matter if they’re left or right on the political spectrum, there’s endless junk on YouTube for both.)
There’s surely good stuff on YouTube, but as a parent I honestly wouldn’t miss it if it disappeared overnight.
Legacy Media made celebrities out of people far worse than Tate decades before Youtube: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Mesrine
Media's propensity to do so has been lampooned before as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Born_Killers
Tagline: "Media made them superstars"
> and is a primary enabler of fringe belief bubbles.
Oh? It's not like anyone's ever seen conspiracy theory programs on TV before Youtube. Heck, if someone re-rendered some of those with AI to use Alex Jones' voice, even his viewers might not be able to tell the difference.
By banning Indian school children and sucking the oxygen out of competing influences like Pewdiepie.
Also, just as an example, YouTube demonetises (and therefore effectively punishes) you for using words like ‘suicide’ so now we have to say silly things like ‘unalive’ — at least until Google/the advertisers catch on. These days YouTube is more censored than traditional TV.
This is evident in (e.g.) WW2 documentaries where an old 4:3 television broadcast is simply put online, and the original footage had perhaps footage of corpses but on Youtube it is blurred.
Covid vax concerns were allowed during the last months of the Trump administration, but it suddenly became censored after Biden was elected.
Moderna reported positive phase 3 trial results in November 2020. FDA’s review was completed in December and an emergency authorization was granted. The full trial results were published in medical journals a few months later, around the same time as Biden entered office.
So maybe it had nothing to do with Trump/Biden and simply was a reaction by YouTube to the proven efficacy of the new vaccines.
Page and Brin started Google in her garage. She was employee #16 at the company. She was behind the Google logo, Google Doodles, Image Search, AdSense, then all of advertising, and ultimately YouTube.
Safe to say Google would not be where it is today without her role. RIP.
So she made some of the most user-hostile, internet-ruining products and created one of the most evil companies currently active? Great obituary going on there. With apologies to the people grieving her, she is basically 2024 Thomas Midgley Jr.
> Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.
I'll say personally it's tragic to see someone like this pass in their 50s. Given Susan's impact on both Google as a whole and more specifically YouTube it's no understatement to say that she changed the world profoundly.
I don't think that YouTube, in its current form, or the creator economy that it produced, would exist in anywhere near the same shape had Google not acquired and then spent years funding the company at a financial loss.
Posted by Sundar Pichai.
I’m not familiar with Susan’s work directly, but for example, it’s widely accepted that YT has the best revenue share and payout for its creators compared to competitors like twitch or TikTok.
Someone has to really sit down and figure out how getting paid for making internet videos works. It didn’t exist before.
Also great product leaders give team members principles and tools to work with (like metrics), so they don’t need to micromanage every decision, and the product can still be cohesive.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/05/31/marco-t...
What a strange mix.
Xanax as a party drug is just strange in general.
Daily adderal RX for ADHD or studying. Coke at night to party. Xanax at end of night to come down from the uppers and try to sleep. That mix is pretty common.
Not really religious, but always liked the short line
'For dust you are, and to dust you shall return'
> Unbelievably saddened by the loss of my dear friend @SusanWojcicki after two years of living with cancer. She is as core to the history of Google as anyone, and it’s hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world and I’m one of countless Googlers who is better for knowing her. We will miss her dearly. Our thoughts with her family. RIP Susan.
My mom was one of her teachers and just told me “this is so sad, she was such a beautiful kid. She went on to do amazing things.”
Yes, she did.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statistics-network/explorer/applicat...
One wonders if his mom having terminal cancer was a factor in his overdoing it.
And I cannot imagine how news like that would hit a mother with cancer, when the only thing left for her is legacy.
Truly tragic.
definitely miss that now after the switch back to the faceless leadership, and saddened by the loss. condolences to the family.
lung cancer as well, I don't think she was a smoker so what a bad stroke of luck.
Interesting to mention about the Polgar sisters again [3].
Z''L.
[1] https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-godmother-of-silicon-va...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Successful-People-Lessons/d...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
I'm not sure what to say about that anymore.
I've taken basically all vaccines ever recommended while growing up and traveling, but to say that the covid vaccine was "safe and effective" a year after coming out was a crazy stretch. Why couldn't they just say "we didn't have time to do long term studies, but we think it's fine and worth the risks"? But to say it's safe was a lie IMO and lost the vaccine side a lot of credibility.
Fuck cancer.
If you want to hate, then hate the game, not the player (especially in this case).
I certainly wouldn't mind reading some personal eulogies about what a great mentor her was etc., or about how she influenced your life with her work even if you didn't know her.
But I also don't mind reading critical posts about the role she played, I think that's part of the picture for someone who's famous as a business leader. If people weren't willing to speak freely about the dead, we wouldn't have had the Nobel prizes.
YouTube has videos on the dangers of GMO crops, despite the scientific consensus for their safety and utility.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8959534/#cit000...
YouTube has plenty of videos about electromagnetic sensitivity about which the WHO says: “EHS has no clear diagnostic criteria and there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure.”
https://www.who.int/teams/environment-climate-change-and-hea...
And more stupidity: “Eating these foods kills cancer”
https://youtu.be/WGbFnp56csg?si=t54Pcr3uqjrXRx9f
“12 foods that can fight and cure cancer”
https://youtu.be/FdlKCpEzSAE?si=J6rtKs6valWnamBP
Interview with Robert DeNiro 8 years about his concerns about vaccines and autism and his doubts about the vaccine effectiveness statistics.
https://youtu.be/FJ7iPn39i08?si=mRYD3a3y9HdMPMQ8
Covid censorship was political and not from some altruistic “goodness.”
And YouTube experienced very significant growth during the pandemic. So that “lovely” soul was profiting because of the lockdowns. Lockdowns that were possible due to fear and a lack of any permissible public debate — partially thanks to YouTube. Would lockdowns have ended sooner if there was more debate on the topic allowed? Definitely. What about school closures? Absolutely. But videos debating these things weren’t allowed.
So no, the game and the player in this case are one and the same. I’m not going to respect anyone that supported lockdowns or supported suppressing scientific debate. Curating opinion (and facts) while pretending to not to isn’t worthy of respect.
And, YouTube still allows those addictive kid videos where the narrator says “If you love your parents, like and subscribe. If you don’t love your parents, don’t like and subscribe.”
People live and die. It is inevitable. To the grieving family, I can understand why refraining from insulting the dearly departed is necessary. They are grieving and can be irrational. No need to make things worse for them.
But between unrelated people? Why can't I discuss the legacy of the dead? We are defined by our deeds in life. It is only natural that in death, people will talk and opine about what we have done. Nothing wrong with it.
A better phrase may be "Don't say things that will hurt the feelings of those who are grieving," but that doesn't roll off the tongue so easily.
The custom about “not speaking ill of the dead” makes sense in a small IRL community, not for internationally famous people.
I for one would prefer "don't get attached to evil people"
We are but most folks here basically know nothing of her deeds, or really anything about her. They see one piece of a thing she was a face of for some time period, and that they also knew mostly nothing about, but appear to love to have strong opinions on!
If you want to speak of her deeds then go and learn about them. Otherwise, people aren't speaking of anything other than some small myopic view of a human being they knew nothing about. Folks don't get to say that she is defined by the small piece of stuff they saw, just because they want to have an opinion on it.
Besides being disrespectful, it's not even interesting, and it says more about the people doing it than the person they are talking about.
It's like saying you are defined by the small and short interactions you had with grocery store cashiers who happen to like to post about their experiences with you on the internet and nothing else.
unless you have a magical way to make your comment here invisible to her family and friends, posting it to the internet is not keeping the comment exclusively "between unrelated people." Many of those replies to Pichai are vile.
We've had many such incidents over the recent years and at least in my anecdotal observations, people do not consistently apply this.
With a dead person, I think this logic holds to an even higher degree. Personally I'm not really sure whether I agree or disagree with it, but it seems pretty reasonable, especially if we don't hyperbolically immediately leap to absurdly extreme examples like Hitler or whatever.
If they're rich and powerful who cares... here's John Oliver's reaction to Kissinger dying [0]... tl;dr "not soon enough"
I use YouTube, even though I don't particularly like it, much like every other Google product. Not sure how much of what I dislike on YouTube is her fault or not,and it doesn't really matter anyway. It is not like I hold any hopes of YouTube becoming any better now.
But I find this kind of comment curious. Someone noteworthy and controversial dies, critical comments are sure to follow.
Happened when people such as Kissinger or Chomsky died. No one was saying "show some respect to the person who died, save your opinions for another day". It would be fairly ridiculous to say so.
Edit: some people misinterpreted my comment. I'm just one anonymous voice on the Internet, but am deeply saddened by the passing of Susan Wojcicki, who meant a lot to me as one of the many people who crossed paths with her professionally. I wish her family strength in a very trying moment. She did not deserve this. I've not met another business leader demonstrate everyday kindness to the degree that she did.
Her untimely passing is also a reminder to those of us who sometimes look up to such successful businesspeople that we should all appreciate our luck to be alive and enjoy it to the fullest, as I hope that she did as well, and as I'm sure that she'd prefer we did. RIP
https://med.stanford.edu/survivingcancer/cancer-and-stress/s....
https://press.farm/susan-wojcickis-daily-routine-youtubes-ce...
Sleep about 6hr, which isnt ideal. Not much chance to get sunlight which significantly reduces cancer incidence. Not much relaxing time.
The question becomes, is the work worth it?
So maybe work but not in excessively high stress loads is your point?
Though i think your implied underlying assumption that because she was a leader in tech and under a high workload somehow caused this is unfounded and unnecessary.
Jake died yesterday. I don’t even think he was 40 years old.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41201555
Susan was only 56.
Let’s at least give everyone a chance at a full life.
E.g. compared to being able to live more than 1,000 years or forever and with body in its prime condition recovery etc wise. E.g. having a 25 year old body for 1,000+ years.
2. Imagine two planets, people on one of them believe that expanding is the moral imperative, and the other want stay where they are. Eventually the people from the first planet will be technologically as far away from the people on first planet, as we are from people on Sentinel island. And therefore will be completely reliant on goodwill first people.
3. The only way to preserve life on earth is to develop space technology, once we have sufficient industry in space, controlling whether on earth will be a simple task, trivially solving climate change issue.
Also those two items aren't mutually exclusive. Both can and should happen in tandem. Anyone arguing otherwise is just a mentally lazy person.
Big endian
Yes, both rich and poor die of cancer.
But being rich or even just comfortable gives you a completely different experience during the end of life.
You can afford to quit your job and be with your friends and family.
You can afford to see that best doctors that will ensure you have as comfortable as possible end of life.
Your kids can afford to take a sabbatical to come spend time with you.
You can be sure that no matter what your kids will be financially secure.
You know that you got the absolute best care that you could.
The list goes on.
Cancer is horrible and everyone who loses someone hurts the same. But you absolutely cannot keep saying that being poor and rich doesn’t make a difference during the progress of this awful disease.
Only someone who has never been poor would ever say that.
When my mother died of cancer (also in her 50s, still working as a public teacher in NYC so should have had great insurance for this) the hospital went after the estate with a million dollar bill. I couldn't even afford a lawyer to contest it at the time and ended up not inheriting anything except what I could take out of the house.
The only people with good outcomes are the rich who can afford it, and the poor who couldn't afford anything yet are still being treated because other tax payers are paying into this system.
The US healthcare system is broken beyond belief, and I do think there is some degree of managerial sociopathy around profit (particularly in the pharmaceutical and insurance wings), but by and large there still remain options for people even if they may be arduous, and I do think that hospitals and doctors are still significantly motivated just to provide good care.
Money does buy comfort and care. Also, it does not make one immortal.
We can choose what we take away from events. I could choose to feel unlucky that I haven't made as much money as someone else, and I would be justified in it, because being rich absolutely makes a difference. I just choose to feel lucky to be alive instead, and I'm just as justified. You are free to choose your own perspective.
Those were your exact words. But nice backpedal.
Edit: I don’t want to get into an argument but just beware that your original post rubs a lot of people the wrong way. I respect that’s the pain and sorrow of a loss are the same but please don’t dismiss the power and need of money. It makes a world of a difference in the process of dying. You don’t want to sound like someone living on an ivory tower.
Personally, I wish I had any control at all over YouTube Shorts.
Perhaps not as much of a 'technical' contributor to tech world, but one of the largest companies in the world started in her garage, she was an early employee and served in senior leadership for decades.
Not even a billion $ will protect you from America's problems with cancer and fentanyl. We need to fix this. I mean, just look at this chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cancer-incidence?tab=char...
Is it pesticides like this recent HN thread alludes to?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41182121
Idk. But the US is uniquely doing something very wrong.
Looks like Xanax and Cocaine.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-news/cause-of-death-reveale...
When it comes to US that chart looks a lot like the obesity rate chart, and obesity is a partial gateway to cancer, though they may just correlate too stemming from the same reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.16.24302894v...
"The United States (U.S.) is the leading country in ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption, accounting for 60% of caloric intake, compared to a range of 14 to 44% in Europe. "
Since not even having a billion will allow you to cheat death, perhaps we shouldn't allow billionaires to cheat everyone else in life.
That makes the average come out to less than other countries with universal healthcare.
But it also explains why wealthy people are against universal care in the US -- because they believe their level of care will go down so that everyone else's can go up.
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> Accidental self inflicted injury
"The leading causes of death for unintentional injury include: unintentional
poisoning (e.g., drug overdoses), unintentional motor vehicle (m.v.) traffic,
unintentional drowning, and unintentional falls."
https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/animated-leading-causes.h...
There is one more covid wave going on, so that could be a reason for many people coughing.