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0 pointsjiggawatts5y ago0 comments

My point is that because of the excessive "optimisation" at YouTube, users now have a poor experience if they "don't fit in the middle of the bell curve". The cause of the issues can be high latency, low latency, high bandwidth, low bandwidth... whatever. If you're in the 1%, YouTube has optimised you out in order to save 1% in hosting costs somewhere. It's a type of over-fitting that results in a fragile system.

Engineers at Google get bonuses for shaving 0.1% off of something, because at their scale that could be millions of dollars saved.

Hence protocols like HTTP/3, which exist almost entirely to optimise some Google backend by single-digit percentage points.

YouTube has had every last percent of "inefficiency" squeezed out of it, to the point where lots of users have a degraded experience.

Google famously doesn't care about user experience at all. They care about costs and their own internal KPIs, which are all tied to advertising revenue, not "video playback smoothness".

This is why Firefox was 5x slower on YouTube for years. This is why Google famously has next to zero "customer support", even if you pay them. They don't view you as a customer. You're the product.

Firefox users click on ads less. Firefox users tend to have adblock. They're not good products.

Similarly, Google is fighting a turf war with the likes of NetFlix and Apple for advertising eyeballs, so they do not want to ensure that Apple TV can play back YouTube in the best possible quality. They optimise for Chrome and Chromecast first, everything else a distant second. Got to build that walled garden!

I pay NetFlix the same amount monthly as I pay for YouTube Premium. NetFlix provides support, YouTube doesn't. NetFlix works flawlessly on every device I have, YouTube doesn't.

YouTube doesn't play 4K on my Apple TV 4K! It doesn't play 4K on my flagship Samsung TV! It downgrades my iPhone for 480p even on WiFi!

This kind of anti-consumer (anti-product?) bullshit is why Google needs to be broken up.

The vendor that makes the device, the browser, the search engine, the network protocol, and the advertising platform shouldn't also be television for half the world.

They shouldn't get to degrade the experience to benefit their browser team. They shouldn't get to slow down the experience for a competing browser. They shouldn't get to simply ignore customer complaints. Television broadcasters in most countries have to answer to an ombudsman. YouTube doesn't.

That's too much control that invites anti-competitive, anti-human behaviour. The incentives are all wrong.

0 comments

tripzilch5y ago

I agree with all your critique of Google/YouTube, so I was surprised to read that

> I pay for YouTube Premium

So you're aware that you're the product even if you pay them and you still pay them?

Not that it matters as it's a drop in the ocean.

jiggawattsOP5y ago

A hen will lay eggs, which have a fairly direct monetary value. It doesn't mean the farmer treats their chickens like customers.

In a poor town, a shopkeeper may accept barter instead of cash. Their customers might pay them with eggs, and they would be treated like valued customers even if they're too poor to use trade with real money.

It's a matter of corporate culture on how the consumers are viewed. For largely advertising-driven companies their users are products, even if they pay. For largely product and sales-driven companies their users are customers, even if they're in a free tier or a trial account or whatever.

tracker15y ago

In the case of YouTube Premium, you're paying in lieu of advertisements, so you're the customer again. ;-) Also, my understanding is for most Premium users the creators get a bigger slice than they tend to get from ad views.

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