$$YouTube $$

[Jolly]

Since taking over YouTube, Google is:

1. Adding in more ads.
2. Using a heavier censorship hand.
3. Doing their best to drive consumers to Premium.
4. Using ever murkier rules for content providers.

It's all about the Benjamins...

[Axtremus]

It takes a lot of money to run and maintain YouTube.
The bajjilion servers, gajjilian bytes of storage, gazzilion bits per second of bandwidth to stream the videos ... it takes lots of money to stream that much stuff to the world.

YouTube could not have scaled as fast or as well as it has without Google.

[89th]

Didn’t google take over like a decade ago?

[Jolly]

@89th said in $YouTube $:

Didn’t google take over like a decade ago?

Somewhere around 2006, IIRC. Seems to me the noose has tightened much more over there, since YouTube Premium has been rolled out.

[George K]

Watching a 15 minute video right now, and I get an ad approximately every 4 minutes.

[Jolly]

@George-K said in $YouTube $:

Watching a 15 minute video right now, and I get an ad approximately every 4 minutes.

In years past, you got one, maybe two, total.

[89th]

GK, do you have an ad blocker? I find that it sometimes (sometimes!) removes ads from videos.

[George K]

@89th said in $YouTube $:

GK, do you have an ad blocker? I find that it sometimes (sometimes!) removes ads from videos.

Yup. I run AdBlock, Ghostery, and Ka-Block!

[Mik]

No free lunch. If you don't know what the product is, you are the product.

[Aqua Letifer]

@Jolly Yes but they're doing it stupidly.

[taiwan_girl]

Reading something about google buying You Tube and it was saying that when they first bought it and the first couple of years, the "loss" of running You Tube was about USD$700MM/year

I remember talking with friends and predicted that they would either start charging for watching videos are start adding more ads. It was pretty obvious that they were going to do so.

It is, as Jolly says, all about the money.

[Doctor Phibes]

I watch a lot of YouTube on my TV via Roku, and hardly ever get a commercial at all, which now I come to think of it is rather odd.