Google has entered into a phase where short term profits outweigh long term growth.
If you're a startup, don't do this. Maximizing the growth exponent does a lot more than tweaks on per-user revenue. Intentionally annoying users is bad business.
When companies do this, it's also good to look at PE ratios, since it suggests they don't anticipate growth.
It might well be good for business, but I'm cheering that the slow erosion of trust with Google continues and leads to their demise in a decade or so. The cherry on the cake would be if we can get lawmakers with a backbone to put such companies in check.
No one is suggesting Google should encourage anything. Openly user-hostile actions devalue brand and trust. That's doubly-true for power users who are thought leaders.
If Walmart has store security shoot suspected shoplifters and unionizers with a 9mm, discontinuing that policy would not be encouraging unions or shoplifting.
> No one is suggesting Google should encourage anything.
This is a straw man. I obviously didn't mean that I thought you suggested that Google should explicitly tell people to use ad-blockers.
Now tell me how not doing anything to discourage people from blocking YouTube ads supports Google's long term interests. Or tell me how they could discourage people from blocking their ads without "[devaluing] brand and trust."
> Now tell me how not doing anything to discourage people from blocking YouTube ads supports Google's long term interests
Google maintains a monopoly and their brand. Profits are entire the of percent lower by the few power users who use all blockers. Big-O profits remain similar.
That contrasts with real competition, brand loss, or monopoly loss. That can lead to astronomically lower profits.
That's less money that advertisers like Google have to be shitty.
"To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral." -- Abbie Hoffman
Does anyone else remember installing a bunch of copies of that Win98 era software that would put ads on you desktop and cut you a cheque every month?
Hypothetically, what could they do against a potential script that pre-downloads all new videos from my subscriptions (RSS, but could also pull channels once a day), and detect and remove the ads?
Or an extension/program that lets me pre download the first few minutes of a video, so I can start watching it after 2–3 minutes and won't get annoyed by ad that plays within the buffered amount of time.
Or an extension/program that silences, blacks out ads, and notifies me when the ad is over.
I imagine there's loads more to do on the JavaScript player that selects which video segments to download and play. They feed you a crap list of segments, then have the JavaScript skip past if it decides you're watching like they want.
It would be logical for them to fight tooth and nail on this as it puts their business model at risk.
Personally, as much as I dislike Google, I'd rather everyone get off their youtube addiction, rather than use adblockers (or other similar circumvention methods. Their popularity (IMO) sends a strong signal to the platform owner that people value their content so they should keep fighting against such tools.
The pressure Google puts on content creators forces them to skew greatly towards quantity not quality, and other terrible metrics like "engagement". Adblockers put further pressure on them to go out and personally find sponsors. IMO this makes the situation worse as they're focusing on not pissing off advertisers, and stay away from being opinionated, etc. All this probably won't affect established creators, but pushes everyone else to be vanilla.
You must have missed all the people who got banned for talking about the elections or wars in the middle east or public health policy on vaccines, or trans stuff or about a million other topics. The owners of Google don't want you talking about that stuff.
At some point, if your methods are sophisticated enough and you are the only one doing it, then they probably let you go rather than creating a n=1 mitigation.
However with that same ingenuity, you can probably make money implementing other things and easily pay the $15 monthly sub for no ads.
If you have such skills and spend more than like 10 minutes on a solution, I think you lost money/time. But I respect it if it’s about beating the game (hacker mindset and all)
It would be worth paying Google money if they would care about customers and provided them with a good product but they enshitified YouTube and are continuing to do so. I’m not paying for that.
I think the end game here will be something similar to their web environment integrity proposal, ie hardware attestation that the browser is what it says it is
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadIf you're a startup, don't do this. Maximizing the growth exponent does a lot more than tweaks on per-user revenue. Intentionally annoying users is bad business.
When companies do this, it's also good to look at PE ratios, since it suggests they don't anticipate growth.
I has entered this phase at least 10 years ago.
Indeed. The question I have is does that mean it goes eventually the way of Microsoft/IBM, or the way of SGI/Computer Associates?
HP is at about a fifth of it's peak market cap, largely as a result of a similar play.
I'd short Google, but there's an old saying that markets can be irrational far longer than an individual wallet can sustain a short....
No one is suggesting Google should encourage anything. Openly user-hostile actions devalue brand and trust. That's doubly-true for power users who are thought leaders.
If Walmart has store security shoot suspected shoplifters and unionizers with a 9mm, discontinuing that policy would not be encouraging unions or shoplifting.
This is a straw man. I obviously didn't mean that I thought you suggested that Google should explicitly tell people to use ad-blockers.
Now tell me how not doing anything to discourage people from blocking YouTube ads supports Google's long term interests. Or tell me how they could discourage people from blocking their ads without "[devaluing] brand and trust."
Google maintains a monopoly and their brand. Profits are entire the of percent lower by the few power users who use all blockers. Big-O profits remain similar.
That contrasts with real competition, brand loss, or monopoly loss. That can lead to astronomically lower profits.
And subscriptions still work well enough to be usable. Turns out, not knowing whether I've watched a given video isn't a problem.
That's less money that advertisers like Google have to be shitty.
"To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral." -- Abbie Hoffman
Does anyone else remember installing a bunch of copies of that Win98 era software that would put ads on you desktop and cut you a cheque every month?
Or an extension/program that lets me pre download the first few minutes of a video, so I can start watching it after 2–3 minutes and won't get annoyed by ad that plays within the buffered amount of time.
Or an extension/program that silences, blacks out ads, and notifies me when the ad is over.
Personally, as much as I dislike Google, I'd rather everyone get off their youtube addiction, rather than use adblockers (or other similar circumvention methods. Their popularity (IMO) sends a strong signal to the platform owner that people value their content so they should keep fighting against such tools.
The pressure Google puts on content creators forces them to skew greatly towards quantity not quality, and other terrible metrics like "engagement". Adblockers put further pressure on them to go out and personally find sponsors. IMO this makes the situation worse as they're focusing on not pissing off advertisers, and stay away from being opinionated, etc. All this probably won't affect established creators, but pushes everyone else to be vanilla.
However with that same ingenuity, you can probably make money implementing other things and easily pay the $15 monthly sub for no ads.
If you have such skills and spend more than like 10 minutes on a solution, I think you lost money/time. But I respect it if it’s about beating the game (hacker mindset and all)
My love goes out to each and every one of them. Bless their souls.
I really hope it doesn't come to that
apply some robot detection tech and block robots/scripts
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/clear-skies/jkiagen...
Doesn't seem to be affected by the issue reported here.
Like lovely little leprechauns making the world a better place while I sleep.