If you think all the trees in the park suck because the park does, you're factually incorrect. There are some badass channels on YouTube. Every Frame a Painting. Veritasium (and Veritasium2). CGP Grey. Even SovietWomble — all off my own list. You don't have to watch the video. I was just looking for your opinion as an experienced film industry guy. You also don't have to empty a bucketload on others just because it rained on you. For one thing, Google literally connects the world, in ways nothing else does. But, sure, you can suddenly reduce your argument to one side and stick with the rightousness; as if someone can command you otherwise. Just... shit, man: aim.ALL Youtube channels suck.
I hate the shit out of Every Frame a Painting. Google connects the world. Before Google, it was Alta Vista, Yahoo, Metacrawler, AOL. Google's contribution was a better algorithm which they then slammed advertising on top of and now they "connect the world" because their search results are better than Bing. The world is actually connected by a bunch of shit put together by Global Crossing, Liberty and L3 but sure, fight me.
You're not a bowl of candy today. I never intend to fight you. I only want to point out that, no matter how much you might hate something — and boy, do you — taking cheap shots at it is not helping the conversation along, or your state of mind.
A glass of pinot noir has leavened my mood somewhat. What can I say, hectoring someone in full dudgeon rarely goes well. I want to draw attention, however, to your conviction that "Google literally connects the world." It says a lot about what we accept and what we've forgotten. They don't. They really don't. At best, they reduce friction by a marginal amount. Let's be honest - Bing isn't radically worse than Google, DuckDuckGo isn't radically worse than Bing. Everything Google does, someone else does it almost as well; Google just happens to be the least-expensive, most-polished slightly-more-ubiquitous solution in every space they thrive in and any space they don't thrive, they abandon (along with everyone that signed onto their technology). More than that, they make it up on volume. Vimeo is a demonstrably better platform than Youtube. It's also a lot stickier. They made a whopping $81m revenue last year (after giving 90% of incoming sales to creators) but that's more than Youtube, an outfit that still loses money. But then, Youtube can afford to lose money because Google makes $28b in ad revenue and eventually nobody will even remember Vimeo. All they'll remember is click-overlay, loud-shout-out, 2-second-cut useless-facts-you-already-know cheap-graphics think-you-learned-something-but-you-didn't Youtube. Here's some economics from Hank Green(whom I hate). Hey, Hank - where's the real money at? so really I’m only down $53,000,000. Actual television advertising is vastly more variable than that. I'll say this: I've got a show that airs on Sundays. In 2010 we sold a block of 6 (off-season, network prime-time) 30-second spots for $250k. There were six of those blocks, the program is 42 minutes long. We averaged 6m viewers that season; $1.5m/6m viewers x 1000 is a CPM of $250. Fundamentally: Youtube has created a world where people are falling all over each other for 2 grand per million viewers. This world will never be visited by the people making six figures per million viewers. When your revenue stream is a factor of a thousand less than you're used to, you pack it in and go home, you don't economize. Multiply by everything Google does. Importantly - Google is happy to lose money doing this. They're making more money than the Youtubers are and it still isn't enough to sustain itself. As someone whose livelihood lo these 10 years has been directly dependent on massive, heartless studios I've got tales that would curl your toes... but as someone who has also worked with half the fucktards headlining Vidcon any given year, allow me to say with no quaver in my voice that a Youtube future is a dark one.Sometime in the last year, my YouTube videos received their billionth view. At the average YouTube ad rate of $2 per thousand views (a $2 CPM), that’s around $2 million in revenue from advertising over the last eight years. Not bad! Though, during those eight years, we have spent more than $4 million on the creation of YouTube videos. So also, not good!
A 22 minute TV program is accompanied by sixteen 30-second ads, at an average cost of $25 per thousand impressions. That leaves us with a per-minute CPM of around $19. A 5.5 minute YouTube video monetized the same way would make about $100 per thousand impressions. After a billion views, that’s $100,000,000. To be fair, YouTube would have taken 45% of that money,
You seem to have taken my argument to be "Google is a force of good". That is not my argument, nor has it ever been. That said, I don't want to remain involved in this conversation: nothing I could say would change it. It's disengaged: everything is shit and everyone is stupid for not changing their ways "for the better".
You're too generous. It's more like a two second cut of a fact that's sort of true in a certain context but is provided as irrefutable and the context is dropped. You're right about everything. I've used Bing, and it's fine. But I use Google because that's what I do. When I want a video, I go straight to YouTube. I think Google has become the Kleenex of facial tissues. Others are just as good, but I remember the name brand.2-second-cut useless-facts-you-already-know
I'll give it a try. One person changing 10% of their searches won't break Google's stranglehold, but that's no reason to not explore options.