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almightygarlicdoggo t1_isahpe4 wrote

Given how big YouTube is, I expected it to generate much more profit. It's even smaller than Amazon in 1997

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thblackdeth t1_isalcvy wrote

Helps explain why in the last two years it feels like YouTube is doing 4-5x more adds

I suspect part of the difference is also paying content creators enough. That cuts into Google's share, if they don't give creators enough money, the content will go to other platforms

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almightygarlicdoggo t1_isam15z wrote

Yes I think that makes sense, nevertheless it's still odd given how big YouTube is. This might be why it has so few competitors, they would have to operate at a very big loss for many years, I don't think many companies have that much money to throw away

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thblackdeth t1_isamc9d wrote

Yeah good point, it has to be insanely expensive to have enough storage space and bandwidth for all the videos. If you can't pull in enough of a crowd quickly, it would be massive losses.

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almightygarlicdoggo t1_isanz2s wrote

Interestingly, as you previously commented, you might be right why they are pulling so may ads nowadays, their revenue in 2016 was "only" 6.7$bn. And with how expensive you said it is to operate, I don't think they were making that much profit back then, even though it was still a massive corporation.

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TheRomanRuler t1_isat40i wrote

Cost of hosting videos is enormous. Its why Youtube has practical monopoly on the stuff. Just storing that many videos takes huge amount of storage, allowing people to view it in HD resolution across the world for free... its hugely expensive.

Its actually amazing that we have free platform like Youtube at all.

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cereal-kills-me t1_isefhp9 wrote

The costs are high. But we’re talking about revenue not profit, so costs aren’t really relevant to revenue. I’m very surprised that YouTube isn’t up there closer to Google search ads.

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lucun t1_isaz6m5 wrote

Note that is Youtube revenue, not profits. We're not sure if YT is even profitable or not since Alphabet doesn't break out YT in their operating/net profit lines. YT is rolled up under Google Services outside of the revenue categories in Alphabet's earning reports.

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