Sorry for not exactly understanding how both work, this is just more of what I asked in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41946885
Realistically, once the division is somehow negotiated through, Youtube will have to find a way to make enough money to support its operations, and would find itself in the same bind that every other video site has hit in terms of balancing adoption with income.
The only barrier they will not have to face is competing against Youtube, the big free elephant in the room.
And why would losing a subsidy mean increasing prices? As far as I can tell consumers think YouTube's offerings are overpriced as is and they could probably increase profit by lowering them, especially if it's not their parent's add subsidiary they'd be cannibalising.
If its spun off then the platform has to stand on its own and it would need to make more money.
As a customer you really just have to ask yourself what you're willing to give up when paying for a YouTube analog. Content creators aren't going to engage in a mass exodus unless they're convinced their audience will follow them to other platforms.
And of course the benefits are so large as to be difficult to enumerate.
For example, searching for recipes sometimes shows me Political News, and sometimes the news is even in a different country, and in a language that I don't speak.
Sometimes I also get a few results that are not just irrelevant, but intentionally made to have a visually repulsive thumbnail, like a zoomed-in shot of some skin pathology, which is something that I never search for or click upon. No idea what is happening there.
How to block some posters from ever showing up in my search results?...
Sadly not fixed
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/tebv1z/comment/ihb...
if you are really adventurous
Although it generates a large amount of revenue, YouTube's costs are substantially higher. It provides Google with engagement and a prime source of user data, so subsidising it has been an acceptable trade-off for Alphabet. Recent attempts to increase revenue, although partially successful, have shown that the platform is unlikely to pay its own way because universal accessibility is fundamental to YouTube's success; removal of the free level is not a viable option.
If this is true, why bother with ads? It's completely ruined the platform.
That figure does not include 100 million subscribers (2024).
I am outside my comfort zone but I would bet youtube would thrive without google if those numbers are correct. And it is for sure large enough to not need google for bulk deals etc.
(I did notice today that Google video search was dominated by Tiktok results rather than youtube for the first time)
Ultimately we disabled YouTube in the Google admin panel for the organization, and advised the users to start sharing an unrelated Gmail account to manage the org's YouTube page.
I can't imagine un-merging the service logins to go any better.
Personally, I might start paying a subscription for YouTube. I wouldn't be forced to use a Google account for YouTube, and I would actually invest in my YouTube account.
Most importantly I would start trusting YouTube if it parts its way with Google.
