this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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Right, cause YouTube/Google are really struggling so much that their only option is to increase prices while offering less value and making everyone's experience worse. Maybe, and hear me out here, the massive billion dollar corporation could make less money.
How much do they profit off YouTube again?
Oh wait - they don't. They take losses from it. A business, meant for making money, is suffering a loss to provide goobers like you content and have the goobers making that content profit enough so they aren't in poverty for choosing to make videos for a living.
You people really throw logic out the window when you talk about shit like this. You want corporations to make less money? Go fix the fucking tax laws not bitch about average membership fees like a fuckwit.
As far as I know, YouTube does not lose money(feel free to correct this with a source) and even just from a logical perspective if YouTube loses google money why keep pouring so many resources into it? The correct answer imo is YouTube doesn't lose money theyre just greedy pigs but Alphabet(the parent company behind both google and YouTube) makes 10s of billions of dollars in profit, they are not struggling to pay the bills hell even if YouTube was losing then money fucking good they shouldn't be allowed to hoard that much wealth anyway, but feel free to keep being a corporate bootlicker.
YouTube has been running on a loss since they last posted their info some handful of years ago. I think Susan was being pressured by creators to be transparent or something. YouTube has expanded well beyond what it used to be and hasn't demanded money to compensate. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and Google/Alphabet has been fine with that but clearly aren't anymore.
Alphabet makes money in other areas, yes, but YouTube specifically is the problem child that keeps begging for an allowance. So, how does YouTube fix it? How do they save money? By kicking off the freeloaders. You watch ads, contribute your 13 cents for the day, then fuck off - or you can buy premium.
Like I've said before, if you hate the big companies fix the tax laws, don't bitch about them charging you for the service you've been getting free of charge.
Can you look to that? They only seem to share revenue, not profit. And profit is easily manipulated. Apparently they had 29 billion USD in revenue in 2023. There was a huge growth in revenue. I don't see why you really claim that they're making a loss.
I did find some statistics about YT running at a loss back in 09 but I can't find anything recent really https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=7868311&page=1
This has been a point of discussion for nearly a decade. It's almost common knowledge YouTube runs at a loss. CDN hosting was approximated to be about 2 billion in 2017, not including what they pay to creators, employees, etc. Their revenue does not cover all of these expenses, meaning there are no profits to announce. They borrow money from their parent company, Alphabet, because they benefit from YouTube by it merely existing under their control. They have an effective monopoly on video hosting and zero meaningful competition.
First of all, a link to reddit isnt an acceptable source. Second if it was common knowledge that YouTube ran at a loss I would think looking up "does YouTube run at a loss" would give something more recent then 2009 I did find this from 2016, by looking for "YouTube revenue report" and according to this YouTube generated 31bn USD in 2023, unfortunately I can't find any concrete numbers for operating costs but some estimates I read were between a couple hundred mil to a few bn, either way drops in the bucket compared to profits. Sure YouTube may have operated at a loss at first but its highly unlikely it still is.
A reddit post from 8 years ago is not going to have up to date information so no, not a valid source, but even in that reddit post many people point out that youtube was breaking even in 2014 not operating at a loss and I find it highly unlikely that the growing YouTube would still be breaking even a decade later. I did read the reddit post and the sources they provide require subscriptions to access. This will be the last I respond to this though since I can't see this going anywhere, continuing the conversation would be asinine.
But you said they aren't making a profit. And you could see their revenue heavily increased in the last few years. So something has to give.
The problem is not that YT cannot make money, the problem here is that the options are that you can choose if watching video, with or without ads, for free (well, paying with your data) or pay with money and your data to watch videos with ads.
I am not saying I have some god-like right to watch videos for free but on the other hand it seems that at YT they are trying as hard as they can to make me install adblocker to be able to use their service with minimun hassle.
YT, like every other company, is learning that if they don't care about customers then customers don't care about them. They are making the false equation "one less user with adblocker == one more user on Premium|without adblocker", which is obviously false. And they are forgetting that they have a lot of more or less direct competition.
Quite a statement to say that Google (YouTube) would care about customers.
They care. Problem is that they care only to be able to make more money. They are simply trying to see how much money they can make before rendering the service worthless or unusable
Do you know how little money advertisers pay per ad? I think last I heard it's between 0.5 and 3 cents. Could be even lower. That's probably not enough, so they sell your anonymized data. That's not enough, so they offer a membership without ads so the ratio can allow them to get closer to break even. What's left?
The people getting the benefits of membership without paying for it. Third party apps letting you use premium features for free? Gone. Didn't push the needle far enough. Most of their userbase using adblocker? New target acquired.
They're very clearly trying to get their revenue and expenses to hit 1:1 because no company that's doing well is going to crack down on their users. Netflix was flourishing so they let you share accounts. Then, the bill came and they said fuck that. Their revenue and profits went up what, 60%? They just had to endure the people throwing tantrums.
No, they're learning that if 5% of the people using adblockers instead get Premium, they lose less money, even if it means doing what Netflix did and riding out the storm while people bitch and moan about how their free shit isn't free anymore. Should they help offset it by making Premium more worthwhile with features even third party apps could do? Absolutely. Do I hate having to defend a company that could be doing so much more to benefit their users but are making pretty common sense business practices? Absolutely.