I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but it is simply not plausible to believe that Google is trying to turn YouTube into a paid pirate stream site by blind-eyeing illegal content uploads and annoying users into paid subscriptions by ever-increasing ad load. For one thing, the company has really deep pockets and is very easy to find. Actual pirate streaming sites are much more ephemeral and have negligible assets that rightsholders could go after.
Google seems to have a really, really, really bad track record of making consumers pay actual money for services. (They do have success at B2B paid services, e.g. GSuite). And they do have a really, really, really good track record of making money off of advertising. So, it seems much more likely that two totally different divisions of the company, that probably don't talk much, are trying to maximize their own individual KPIs, and from the outside creating the impression of some grand master plan. The advertising guys are stacking more and more ads into popular content (btw, thank goodness Adblock works perfectly on YT content... for now). The Youtube guys are trying to create direct monetization of their userbase for... some KPI I can't think of (maybe to create regular recurring rev rather than lumpy ad dollars?).
Kid, the media industry ITSELF is uploading that stuff "illegally", ever since at least Warner were caught red-handed, doing exactly that!
Because even with how utterly deluded those cokeheads are, even they realized that that way they actually make MORE money. Something small independent music labels had already figured out less than a year after Napster. (I worked in the business from 1999 to 2004, and had contacts until 2007.)
On longer content it's now common for the stream to be interrupted with ads, they don't just play at the beginning. We watch youtube sometimes on our fire tv stick. Probably I should try pihole but I'm between pis.
"For the love of phlegm...a stupid wall of death rays. How tacky can ya get?"
- Post Brothers comics
Doesn't seem very likely (Score:5, Interesting)
Google seems to have a really, really, really bad track record of making consumers pay actual money for services. (They do have success at B2B paid services, e.g. GSuite). And they do have a really, really, really good track record of making money off of advertising. So, it seems much more likely that two totally different divisions of the company, that probably don't talk much, are trying to maximize their own individual KPIs, and from the outside creating the impression of some grand master plan. The advertising guys are stacking more and more ads into popular content (btw, thank goodness Adblock works perfectly on YT content... for now). The Youtube guys are trying to create direct monetization of their userbase for ... some KPI I can't think of (maybe to create regular recurring rev rather than lumpy ad dollars?).
Blind-eyeing??? (Score:2)
Kid, the media industry ITSELF is uploading that stuff "illegally", ever since at least Warner were caught red-handed, doing exactly that!
Because even with how utterly deluded those cokeheads are, even they realized that that way they actually make MORE money.
Something small independent music labels had already figured out less than a year after Napster. (I worked in the business from 1999 to 2004, and had contacts until 2007.)
Because it is advertisement.
So, yeah, a silly theory.
Re: (Score:2)
On longer content it's now common for the stream to be interrupted with ads, they don't just play at the beginning. We watch youtube sometimes on our fire tv stick. Probably I should try pihole but I'm between pis.