Youtube doesn’t have a large competitor challenging it for market share like other major companies do. There are plenty of streaming services, but YouTube is the only game in town when it comes to people generally browsing video content and following their favorite creators.
Coca-Cola has Pepsi. McDonald’s has Burger King. Toyota has Honda. Why doesn’t YouTube have one?
In: Economics
They had Vimeo for a while and it still exists and is probably the closest thing to a “competitor” YouTube has. It’s just not really one anymore .
Basically online video is extremely expensive and complicated so few are willing to truly challenge YouTube. Esp bc as a start up what could you really offer to creators/viewers to get them interested in using your platform.
If companies compete it tends to be standalone paid services like say Nebula.
YouTube lost money for a very long time doing what they do.
Because I imagine it would take a hell of a lot to even come close to being against YouTube.
Plus YouTube is owned by Google. They literally can buy you
Youtube is owned by Google. That tells you everything you need to know about a competitor rising up.
Other heavyweights like Amazon have no need to venture into a video hosting platform when they’re already monopolizing other avenues like online shopping and cloud servers. Everyone else is just too poor to even attempt to rival youtube.
Two main factors, first network effect and second it’s hard.
Network effect is the idea that you need to have people using your product for others to use it. If there is no one using your platform to upload videos how do you attract people to watch videos and upload videos on your platform?
It’s hard, it takes a HUGE amount of storage space and bandwidth to serve videos. Google bought YouTube in 2006 and didn’t turn a profit on it until the early to mid 2010s. They only make a profit because of their huge ad-network augmented with their subscriptions.
So basically you need to get a bunch of people to use your platform and have a ton of cash to build it, which is quite the hurdle to get over.
There are a number of alternative video streaming platforms but none of them come close to YouTube in scale, and most are overrun with pretty toxic far-right hate speech crap.
Google estimates 3.7 million new videos are uploaded every day. There are about maybe 10 companies in the world that can support that kind of infrastructure without charging for uploads.
An online service is very different from a product so it’s not as easy to determine what a “competitor” is. When it comes to “websites people mostly go to to watch a video,” Netflix has a greater market share than Youtube does. When it comes to “websites people stream games on,” Twitch outperforms Youtube. Youtube definitely dominates the market for user-uploaded static content, but unlike physical products, there is never a question of “I’ll buy what’s available, even if this restaurant has Coke, no Pepsi.” Nor is there a question of price comparison, sales events, or other incentives to buy one brand over another.
Spend a few moments thinking about why you would want to use a new competitor to youtube.
What would you watch there? Who’s making content there? Now imagine being someone who makes content, you want people to see it right? So where do you publish it?
Now imagine that it is somehow successful in bringing new users and creators over, they also need to deal with infinitely scaling video hosting in data centers with 24/7 distribution to the entire world.
These are major hurdles, and while the cost and infrastructure are not insignificant, I think the user base is the biggest obstacle.
There has to be a reason for someone to use your site. And if it’s new, no one is making content for it, and no one making content elsewhere sees an audience worth making it for.
The first is that building some like YouTube is both incredibly difficult and incredibly expensive. Then you have to figure out how to monetize it, that requires users, and users are basically luck.
No way VC is going to throw dozens of billions after something that will almost certainly fail.
Only way to beat TouTube is through out flanking in some new area, like TikTok.
It’s hard. Even Google failed at it with Google Video, and instead decided to acquire Youtube. YouTube was also struggling at the time to support all the infrastructure required.
Google manages bc it uses its near duopoly powers in Search/Ads and Play Store to help fund and monetize its operations.
Secondly, there are network effects bc a ton of ppl use YouTube. If you want to start a rival service, most YouTube creators would not switch bc the potential audience would be tiny.
I think the only real way to break YouTube’s monopoly on video is to enable interoperability standards to allow a rival service’s videos to show up on YouTube search, and vice versa. (Maybe thru a browser plugin). This would let a rival service still reach the YouTube audience
If you’re looking for a video where do you look? You do a search of YouTube or Google, and the top results are YouTube links. Every person who makes videos or wants to advertise also know this. So if YouTube does what you want it to do, even if it does it badly, why would you spend the time and money elsewhere? All aggregator websites are the same in that regard. Service would have to severely degrade for superusers to go through the transition costs of building a new platform. And because of the massive bandwidth and storage costs of video, it’s unlikely a revolutionary competitor will rise up to challenge youtube
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