Alphabet announces Q3 2020 earnings

Author: jhatax

Score: 153

Comments: 180

Date: 2020-10-29 20:25:38

Web Link

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loufe wrote at 2020-10-29 21:01:02:

Anybody who watches much Youtube has surely seen the uptick in ads over the last year or so. That's clearly reflected in the increased revenue on that front.

jarjoura wrote at 2020-10-29 23:53:08:

Just FYI, this is mostly the content creators doing this. They pick the frequency and places in the video where they want the ads to play.

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6175006

The reality is it takes so much time and energy to produce content and the bar is high that creators make it their full time jobs.

So either, they have YouTube monetization with ads or they do in-video ad rolls, "sponsored by Squarespace", yadda yadds. Or they literally include some product into their video and it acts as a hidden ad because they generate a story around that product.

stefan_ wrote at 2020-10-30 00:23:50:

Except for the part where YouTube at some point just enabled mid-roll ads for essentially it's entire catalogue, even if previously disabled:

https://twitter.com/GamersNexus/status/1280566684483543043

This is of course an old classic with anything Google: yes, you can "opt out", but expect your choice to randomly reset at the whim of a PM looking to show "traction".

jacobolus wrote at 2020-10-30 01:10:35:

Also I have heard multiple youtube videos publicly state (maybe speculatively?) that opting out of mid-roll ads will make Youtube reduce the rate at which their videos are presented to the audience.

The Youtube ad experience has become almost intolerably bad in the past few months. I’m considering just always downloading their videos to my local machine before trying to watch them, even though it’s substantially less convenient.

xbmcuser wrote at 2020-10-30 01:51:56:

If you watch so much youtube consider paying the monthly subscription that removes ads which you hate supports the content creators which you seem to enjoy. From what I understand content creators make more money from that than ads. Once google gave the option to remove ads by paying for subscription anyone complaining about ads is wrong as now it's now about the ads but you not willing to pay for the content you want to consume.

ekianjo wrote at 2020-10-30 04:46:23:

Until they introduce ads again for paying subscribers. You never know what they have in store for you in the future when you subscribe.

maurys wrote at 2020-10-30 06:44:10:

Unsubscribe then? You're likely paying monthly anyway.

davidjnelson wrote at 2020-10-30 01:53:42:

YouTube premium is awesome.

ahelwer wrote at 2020-10-30 01:28:20:

I use ublock origin on Firefox and have never seen an ad on youtube. No idea why people don't do this. I will probably eventually pay for premium but would be better off just supporting people through patreon directly.

FractalParadigm wrote at 2020-10-30 08:53:47:

I swear I must be crazy, I've been using uBlock Origin on FF for years now and YouTube ads have _never_ been blocked for me, whether it's Windows, macOS, Android, I always get them.

tortasaur wrote at 2020-10-30 13:38:42:

You might have disabled some of the default filter lists.

pixl97 wrote at 2020-10-30 04:15:20:

Because only some of us can do this. If too many of us do it Google will work around it.

amf12 wrote at 2020-10-30 10:46:48:

> Because only some of us can do this. If too many of us do it Google will work around it.

How do you expect Google to keep YouTube running if you don't want to watch ads AND also don't want to pay for premium? I understand using adblocker on shitty websites (and you could argue that YouTube is one of those with frequent ads) but then you should pay for premium. Just my 2 cents.

ekianjo wrote at 2020-10-30 04:47:19:

They will, and the day they make you watch 10 ads in a 5 minutes video the viewership will progressively drop to zero.

tobyjsullivan wrote at 2020-10-30 05:36:11:

Cable television proved this is not true. Viewership will drop to zero when something better comes along - and that something better may or may not have ads. But most people seem to have a very, very high tolerance for watching ads if there's no better option.

Izkata wrote at 2020-10-30 04:17:55:

They already have a few times - videos would just not play if an adblocker is enabled. Tends to only last about a week.

vmception wrote at 2020-10-30 01:16:31:

Which is still good, ad spots are like slots. Google increases the number of slots possible, and content creators choose how many slots they want.

This means more people trying to advertise things can buy those increased numbers of slots which get consumed more frequently and are.

yaboy wrote at 2020-10-30 00:08:06:

Don’t deflect here. Alphabet benefits as well.

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote at 2020-10-30 00:12:44:

What's to deflect? Duh that Alphabet benefits as well, it is not running a charity, nor are the content creators who spend countless hours and thousands of dollars creating content. They are doing it because they can profit from it.

It's important to know and point out that the UX of ads is in part chosen by creators.

loosetypes wrote at 2020-10-29 22:10:24:

I pay for YouTube Premium and find it and, especially, the content on YouTube to be indispensable.

I choose not to log in on my work machine though, and the YouTube experience there leaves me with such a bad taste in my mouth.

Most recently, adds that don’t go away without user input. Ugh.

I’m not ready to cancel my personal Premium subscription, but it does have my considering how I can decouple myself from the platform moving forward.

And yes, Adblock, but not the point here.

munificent wrote at 2020-10-30 00:17:32:

I'm biased since I work at Google, but, seriously, my YouTube Premium subscription is the most bang for the buck out of everything I subscribe to. My YouTube experience is _delightful_. I never see ads, and my feed is nothing but wonderfully enriching videos all tailored to my hobbies and interests.

lostsock wrote at 2020-10-30 00:25:17:

Couldn't agree more. YouTube premium and Google Music for the one price? Works on all of my devices, no ads, and totally seamless. Such good value for money.

Apotheos wrote at 2020-10-30 02:07:52:

Just a heads up Google Play Music is being shut down, of you have any uploaded music, download it!

mchusma wrote at 2020-10-30 02:15:09:

It's now youtube music, it's basically the same. Although you can watch videos in it, or just listen to videos as music? It's sort of odd and I half get it (lots of good audio content on youtube if you turn off the video).

So you still get music. But Google's branding strategy here is just odd and confusing. I don't really think they even known how this is going to shake up.

lostmsu wrote at 2020-10-30 02:00:16:

100% agree, except I don't pay anything and simply use ad blockers.

erklik wrote at 2020-10-30 03:54:06:

> my feed is nothing but wonderfully enriching videos all tailored to my hobbies and interests

The ad part I agree quite well with. However, I find that Youtube's recommendation algorithm is quite lacking. I mean this is also the case with Netflix and other social media I have used so not just Youtube's fault (only one that sticks out as better is TikTok).

For me, it tends to simply repeatedly recommend __way__ too similar videos. If I somehow happen to watch a video about aa tech review, my feed will be tech reviews and that's it. Heaven forbid I make the mistake of clicking some random political video, and I am now in a hole where my feed is full of right-wing, anti-vaxxers, and conspiracy theorists and so on.

In general, it seems like Youtube's algo gets quite quickly to the local minimum/maximum but then struggles to look around or away from it. This leads to very a insular and locked-in-your-own-box experience.

GrantZvolsky wrote at 2020-10-30 20:22:19:

I couldn't agree more. YouTube et al gave me what I can only describe as _recommendation anxiety_, where I opt not to engage with content solely because I don't want similar content recommended in the future.

munificent wrote at 2020-10-30 17:31:29:

_> Heaven forbid I make the mistake of clicking some random political video, and I am now in a hole where my feed is full of right-wing, anti-vaxxers, and conspiracy theorists and so on._

Yeah, every time I click some SNL clip on Reddit, YouTube decides I want all SNL all the time. But I find simply right-clicking a couple and telling it to stop recommending them is very effective at undoing that.

_> it seems like Youtube's algo gets quite quickly to the local minimum/maximum but then struggles to look around or away from it._

I've observed this too. Sometimes I feels like I have watched every single synthesizer video ever uploaded to YouTube. But I don't consider that an entirely bad thing. There's something to be said for a service with an engagement ceiling. If I find myself scrolling too far down to find an interesting video, that's a good signal that maybe I should get off YouTube and find something better to do.

us0r wrote at 2020-10-29 22:28:10:

Netflix and YT are hands down the best money I spend each month. I was a little annoyed they made me switch from play to yt music but that's grown on me now too.

GrantZvolsky wrote at 2020-10-29 23:51:31:

The volume of ads is lower if you're logged in, even without a subscription.

Orphis wrote at 2020-10-29 23:48:46:

Why don't you have a personal browser profile where you are logged in YT to watch any video?

dylan604 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:59:14:

church and state. separate separate separate. pure and simple. don't do personal anything on corporate anything. BYOD and use your mobile with your personal creds. i don't even connect my personal device to corp wifi.

benhurmarcel wrote at 2020-10-30 08:55:57:

Youtube Premium is nice but it's priced fairly high. More expensive than a music subscription, just to remove some Youtube ads (it doesn't remove in-video ads, you need to use Sponsorblock for that).

I'd pay for Premium if it didn't come bundled with a music subscription (and the price reflected that).

warrenq wrote at 2020-10-30 13:19:08:

YouTube videos have a Trillions of hours of worth of videos, many of which of which will potentially change your life.

Comparing it to shitty Music Services is seriously underrepresenting it's value

ggggtez wrote at 2020-10-29 21:36:14:

I recently watched a 30 minute video on a non-adblocked browser. There was 2 ads every 3 minutes.

It's kind of crazy that this is likely the "normal" experience for millions of people. And that's even without considering how many channels also include "sponsored" content within the videos themselves.

sleepydog wrote at 2020-10-29 22:09:49:

I think it definitely depends on the channel. Most of the videos I watch only have one or two ads.

What I really hate are the very long ads that you have to skip manually. Sometimes we play something on the TV while we're cooking so we're not by the remote to skip them, and they can be really egregious, like 15 minute ads.

mcaravey wrote at 2020-10-29 22:29:12:

I had an hour long ad show up a couple of weeks ago. It was basically a film on some health/food product, but I had never seen something so over the top like that before.

dylan604 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:55:06:

This needs to die in a fire. Like the parent comment said, I will sometimes allow ads to play through if I'm away from the remote expecting the actual content to continue after a 30 second interruption. When you suddenly have the "channel" changed on you from something like this it needs to stop. Hell, I can't even listen to a full album in YT without a "are you still here" after 4 or 5 tracks. That "are you still watching" should come up multiple times in the ad by itself. Maybe the popup should be "Are you still watching? Why?"

deeeeplearning wrote at 2020-10-29 22:26:52:

The iOS app has become unusable for me because of this. Not only are there too many ads but they are so poorly targeted to me that I have to seriously question the capabilities of Google's army of engineers...

ugh123 wrote at 2020-10-29 23:29:52:

That could just be an ad inventory thing. If YT doesn't have a targeted/discrete audience large enough within a campaign window to fill out impressions then they likely widen the net to complete the run.

tpmx wrote at 2020-10-30 00:01:48:

I think they explicitly choose to run the same ad over and over again for 40-60 times to the same user to force that user to subscribe to Youtube Premium.

(Someone's evil A/B experiment resulted in such a high conversion rate they couldn't stop themselves.)

ugh123 wrote at 2020-10-31 04:10:01:

I think thats certainly in their repertoire too. In fact, they're probably experimenting with a number of degrading user experiences to see what performs best

dylan604 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:56:07:

Just play political ads from whatever candidate over and over. That'll get somebody to make the ads go away.

leesalminen wrote at 2020-10-30 02:13:11:

I literally converted today because of this. Damn you Dr Squatch soap company.

davidjnelson wrote at 2020-10-30 01:56:12:

If people would pay for content we might have less ads...

ugh123 wrote at 2020-10-31 04:11:49:

I wish that were the case. I'm regularly served just as many NYTimes ads as before I became a subscriber.

CydeWeys wrote at 2020-10-30 03:21:16:

Wait till you see what TV is like these days. Ads everywhere.

sniperjzp wrote at 2020-10-29 23:07:17:

So many people complain about the mount of Ads, or the quality of Ads, but don't forget there's YT Premium. There's no free lunch, creators also need to feed their family. (it's your choice to use adblocker anyway)

NoodleIncident wrote at 2020-10-30 00:51:41:

If you _only_ care about the creator's cut, sending them the cost of one month of premium directly would vastly outweigh any loss from your use of adblock. It's probably not even a dollar, across all the time you've watched their videos.

Now, does youtube also deserve a cut? Probably, that's up to you. I'm just tired of the guilt trips.

drewg123 wrote at 2020-10-29 23:56:08:

I always thought creators made roughly as much or more from the promos they embed in the videos. See the LTT video about how they make money:

https://youtu.be/-zt57TWkTF4?t=505

The time code takes you to a pie chart breaking down their revenue. YT ads are 26% and in-video promos are 27%

phhlho wrote at 2020-10-29 21:08:42:

Not just more ads, but longer ones as well. We used to use youtube to put nursery songs on in the living room for our kids. All of a sudden we notice it's 15 minutes into an ad for the state of Ohio. So many less interruptions now that we play them off Spotify.

augusto-moura wrote at 2020-10-29 21:10:19:

I frequently get double ads nowadays, they are really pushing to a Youtube Premium signature

toxik wrote at 2020-10-29 21:56:31:

Honestly though, why not pay for premium? It’s a little expensive, but it’s a more sustainable ad free streaming. Seems like a win in my book.

Ads are going to be the end of us all if you ask me. Completely perverse incentives. Make people feel bad so they CONSOOM? Dark stuff.

dwaite wrote at 2020-10-30 02:42:12:

Different from the OP, but Youtube Premium now feels like "we will just make YouTube worse and worse to sell Premium".

Even with all of the pushing toward Premium they have done for me, the only values I even know are "you get the ad blocker experience without installing an ad blocker" and "we stop blocking picture-in-picture support".

I hate that ad blocking causes the channels I watch to not get financial support, but at this point I refuse to let Google be the middle-man and make money off of providing a purposely horrific experience.

CydeWeys wrote at 2020-10-30 03:23:15:

What if they just stopped the free version entirely and became paid-only like Netflix, Disney+, etc.? There's no reason they have to offer a free tier at all. To the extent that the paid tier makes them more money, I understand why they'd push people onto it.

benhurmarcel wrote at 2020-10-30 09:03:50:

> What if they just stopped the free version entirely and became paid-only like Netflix, Disney+, etc.?

Those are cheaper than Youtube Premium, for more exclusive content.

warrenq wrote at 2020-10-30 13:20:05:

Most YouTube videos are also exclusive

sdoering wrote at 2020-10-29 21:25:34:

I have two Chrome browser personas (actually quite a few more for work reasons, but two I have open permanently). One with adblock the other without (also due to work reasons). If I use yt on the adblock free one I am bombarded by ads. With adblock? All is fine.

saiya-jin wrote at 2020-10-29 22:09:07:

Exactly this. I never see ads on youtube from my desktop, and I don't use youtube on phone. When a friend wants to show me some youtube video they like on their phone, its always a bit of shock how annoying those ads are. I don't have any premium account, just usual set of blockers.

I've became super allergic to ads generally quite some years ago, not watching any channel on TV, just movies/tv shows streamed from PC. Can't and won't go back, ever.

robotnikman wrote at 2020-10-29 23:25:36:

I feel the same way about being 'allergic' to ads. In contrast, when my friend watches youtube on the TV, he is bombarded by ads and doesn't seem to care at all.

I don't mind the premium to pay for ad free youtube. Also the free Play Music (RIP)

TheGallopedHigh wrote at 2020-10-29 23:27:11:

I would recommend Firefox focus for mobile. When navigating to the YouTube site I experience no ads.

babesh wrote at 2020-10-29 22:30:27:

They will “optimize” for more ads till people stop going to YouTube for videos. As shown by search, Facebook, etc that limit is far, far higher than people expect. I am not sure if any of them have reached the limit yet.

microtherion wrote at 2020-10-29 21:48:57:

And they still don't seem to have given up the hope that I'll sign up for the YouTube f&*&(ing Music trial one day. Won't you have some dignity, Google?

3guk wrote at 2020-10-29 22:02:23:

It frustrates me that they still haven’t figured out that perhaps a users language is not tied to their IP address and that perhaps other indicators should be considered.

Whilst I hate adverts - it seems like a waste of both advertiser spend and my time, to show me adverts that I do not understand....

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote at 2020-10-30 00:14:26:

Google makes ads generic: "Google is so dumb it doesn't even know my language"

Google infers your language and other information about you and serves specific ads: "omg Google is so creepy."

gerash wrote at 2020-10-30 00:20:31:

If they get too efficient with signals folks are going to push back because ads become too targeted and feels their privacy is at risk.

I personally feel the best solutions are either ad-free services that are paid for either one time or through a subscription.

If something is ad supported, then the way to guarantee privacy is to take a pool of candidate ads from an ad network and rank them locally based on a personal profile stored locally as well and pick the top ad to display. These locally stored personal profiles need to be also synced across personal devices with automatic merge conflict resolution.

As you can see it requires quite a bit of infrastructure that doesn't seem to exist

ogre_codes wrote at 2020-10-29 22:08:10:

I don't know, I'd almost prefer that. Gives you an easy signal to ignore.

3stripe wrote at 2020-10-29 21:08:38:

Tip for avoiding them (on my

Samsung TV anyway) - if you see 2 ads queued... hit back, then play again... often you get just 1 ad or even none at all on the second play

qz2 wrote at 2020-10-29 23:11:24:

Yes. It got so bad it drove me to youtube-dl. No irony there.

benhurmarcel wrote at 2020-10-30 09:07:32:

If you're on desktop you can just install a couple of browser extensions (uBlock and Sponsorblock).

qz2 wrote at 2020-10-30 09:29:58:

Yeah. I like to watch them on my phone in bed though. So I use youtube-dl and VLC.

no_one_ever wrote at 2020-10-29 21:23:22:

I have straight up gotten a 3 hour ad that was just a lo-fi beat mix but it was an advertisement! What??

mft_ wrote at 2020-10-29 21:32:46:

In amongst a music playlist I was served an ad that was (I think) a full Jeff Buckley song (or someone that sounded very much like him).

Made me wonder if someone had found a loophole and was somehow making money from it?

redorb wrote at 2020-10-29 21:43:53:

I had this happen - but I chalked it up to a punishment for using ad block, .. I got youtube premium for free when I bought Google Music (which is now youtube music?) ... it was a fair bundle for $10, all the music I want and no ads on youtube to boot ...

If they de-couple them I don't know if either is worth $10/mo indivdually.

augusto-moura wrote at 2020-10-29 21:28:09:

Lofi hiphpop radios got too far

steveklabnik wrote at 2020-10-29 21:24:51:

Pepsi, or something else?

Consultant32452 wrote at 2020-10-30 05:23:18:

It's an election year. I've heard multiple youtubers remark that the election ads have been a big revenue boost.

firecall wrote at 2020-10-29 22:37:55:

And yet earnings for YouTubers through ads have declined!

Apparently.

To the best of my knowledge anyway, and my own limited direct experience :-)

jarenmf wrote at 2020-10-29 23:48:17:

Kodi on Tv, NewPipe on the phone, I would have tolerated some ads if there weren't so intrusive

drewg123 wrote at 2020-10-29 23:57:26:

NewPipe works on the TV too, if its AndroidTV based..

alexpetralia wrote at 2020-10-29 21:51:40:

Yes it is the first time the YouTube experience has become noticeably unusable for me.

blibble wrote at 2020-10-29 21:02:33:

youtube has ads?

augusto-moura wrote at 2020-10-29 21:03:45:

If you are using desktop and a adblock probably not, but if you are using the mobile app...

janhenr wrote at 2020-10-29 21:09:36:

LPT: firefox on mobile allows you to install extensions such as ublock

arminiusreturns wrote at 2020-10-29 21:11:33:

Thank goodness for Newpipe, even if they get broken way too often in between updates.

babas wrote at 2020-10-29 21:09:25:

If you use Android Youtube Vanced is really awesome. Removes ads and has function for skipping in-video annoyances (sponsors, intros, etc)

https://vancedapp.com/

augusto-moura wrote at 2020-10-29 21:24:57:

Seems really cool but it doesn't look open source, there's any security guarantees within the app? I'm really paranoid of where a put my Google account credentials

babas wrote at 2020-10-29 21:55:48:

I'm pretty sure it's modded version of the official youtube app so no guarantees (Just use a dummy account?).

I'm actually very interested in how the vanced developer has made this. This app is pretty much identical to the youtube app with premium features enabled and ad/sponsor bocking/skipping.

city41 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:33:56:

I never log into YT on any device. I still get great recommendations and easily stay on top of my favorite channels. IMO the only benefit to logging in is being able to comment.

frank2 wrote at 2020-10-30 02:23:29:

--and access to my viewing history and ability to add easily a video to my "watch later" list.

blibble wrote at 2020-10-29 21:42:45:

I use a second account just for it

they're free to steal it if they want

Bjartr wrote at 2020-10-29 21:20:47:

Even then if you pay for YT Premium / YT Music

takeda wrote at 2020-10-29 21:10:00:

there are solutions to that too

orliesaurus wrote at 2020-10-29 21:03:57:

Well, not everyone runs an adblocker!

marta_morena_28 wrote at 2020-10-29 21:06:31:

Sad for them. Seeing Youtube on mobile makes me gag each time. There is more ads than content, how can anyone actually bear this?

petercooper wrote at 2020-10-29 21:26:24:

Agreed, but I pay for YouTube Premium. Now it's one of the last things I would cancel. Instant videos on every single device I own including TV.

takeda wrote at 2020-10-29 21:12:15:

https://vancedapp.com/

tlarkworthy wrote at 2020-10-29 21:09:23:

No ads if you pay.

mittermayr wrote at 2020-10-29 22:24:29:

What about the content creators dedicating intro/mid/outro to sponsors?

skocznymroczny wrote at 2020-10-30 08:47:59:

Do these dedications really help sales? I mean these kind of endorsements are so obviously fake, you know the content creator isn't using the product at all and is just reading the script.

datguacdoh wrote at 2020-10-30 02:21:27:

double tap to fast forward on mobile is the best feature; reminds me of the 30sec skip I had on my TiVO a decade ago. I tend to jump past the monologues that all creators seem to have nowadays.

elcomet wrote at 2020-10-30 09:58:58:

Until youtube adds a feature that enables creators to choose unskippable sections of the video, and sponsors will require this from youtubers.

lotsofpulp wrote at 2020-10-29 21:06:45:

It's amazing to me that anyone on this site would not be using ublock Origin or content blockers in ios/macos.

missblit wrote at 2020-10-30 00:10:29:

I'm not using any ad-blockers. Ask Me Anything.

smabie wrote at 2020-10-30 01:27:39:

How do you maintain the will to live?

irrational wrote at 2020-10-29 21:06:18:

Other than not knowing about them, why would anyone not use an adblocker?

Kiro wrote at 2020-10-29 21:41:56:

Your question is a bait since any sincere answer to that always gets downvoted. However, I've stopped caring so here goes:

I don't mind ads and have found many things I've bought through ads.

I don't want the page I'm visiting tampered with.

I want to experience the site exactly like it was designed, ads included.

I like to keep up with ad trends.

I'm afraid stuff will break and that I get a suboptimal experience without me even realizing it.

I want to support creators and certain sites.

I pay for YouTube Premium so not an issue there.

skummetmaelk wrote at 2020-10-29 22:48:48:

> I want to experience the site exactly like it was designed, ads included

> I like to keep up with ad trends

Do you work in advertising by any chance?

CydeWeys wrote at 2020-10-30 03:25:36:

I would guess website design/front-end development. If that's something you do on your site then you'd definitely want to see what it looks like on others.

Kiro wrote at 2020-10-30 16:02:16:

Yeah, you nailed it. I'm a front-end developer.

ogre_codes wrote at 2020-10-29 22:14:51:

> I want to support creators and certain sites.

Well at least we can all agree on this one thing. How we get there without dealing with sites that load slowly, look like hell, and track me wherever I go is the big question.

recursive wrote at 2020-10-29 23:53:25:

I think ad-blockers are bad for the web. Their proliferation will create an arms race that will end in more DRM.

That's my reason.

city41 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:31:05:

I primarily watch YouTube on my TV via a Roku. It's probably possible to jailbreak it and install an ad free YT app, but that's beyond what I'm willing to do.

bittercynic wrote at 2020-10-29 21:37:34:

Some people feel that exposure to the ads is worth it to help the people who make videos.

It seems to me the ads do a dollar's worth of damage to the viewer while only giving a penny of benefit to the author.

tracer4201 wrote at 2020-10-29 21:06:22:

Some of the channels I watch have so many ads that it reminds me of cable. Quite frankly I already have HBO and Netflix. If I also pay for YouTube and maybe even Disney Plus, it feels almost like paying as much as I paid for cable, except I also have to pay for faster internet — so at the end of the day, I’m not sure if I’m really better off as a consumer.

I’ve stopped using YouTube because of the crazy ads. And we tried Hulu but the forced ads were enough to have us immediately cancel the free trial. Thanks but no thanks.

halflings wrote at 2020-10-29 21:25:10:

> I’ve stopped using YouTube because of the crazy ads.

Why not pay for YouTube Premium?

At the end of the day, you need to pay in some way to fund the creators making new videos for you to enjoy (+ YouTube for hosting one of the biggest services on the internet).

cobookman wrote at 2020-10-29 21:31:14:

You still have ads with YT Premium. Most creators place multi-minute ads in their content.

pengaru wrote at 2020-10-29 22:04:06:

In case you haven't noticed, most youtube content is marketing _something_.

Sometimes it feels like the overt ads trivially overcome by adblockers or youtube-dl are there just to be something extremely obnoxious you can circumvent and feel relief from while still consuming marketing that is only made desirable by contrast.

ByteJockey wrote at 2020-10-30 01:51:08:

Is this a shot at the ads being the majority of the content these days, or are you just watching kinda shitty channels?

Orphis wrote at 2020-10-29 23:50:22:

They're quite easy to skip on most content. Some even put a "loading bar" to easily identify when it's going to end.

d1zzy wrote at 2020-10-29 21:54:09:

So the content creator has decided to insert their own ad inside their content resulting in a worse user experience (since you seem to be complaining about it). Should Youtube ban in-content third-party ads?

cobookman wrote at 2020-10-29 22:25:05:

I believe YT makes a cut of this ad rev. It's also much harder for ad blockers to block these kinds of ads.

So why would YT block it?

rajup wrote at 2020-10-29 21:39:16:

I think you mean sponsored content which is not quite the same as ads/

cobookman wrote at 2020-10-29 21:46:44:

When you're watching a video and there's a ~1min segment on squarespace...etc, its an ad.

lotsofpulp wrote at 2020-10-29 21:07:50:

>I’m not sure if I’m really better off as a consumer.

You can at least watch what you want when you want.

CydeWeys wrote at 2020-10-30 03:28:25:

And there's a lot more available stuff to watch now than ever before thanks to the likes of YouTube. I'm into some seriously obscure historical warfare stuff that no one has _ever_ made a proper TV show about, but all it takes is one antique weapons dealer/HEMA practitioner YouTuber who already researches all this stuff anyway and you've got many hours of stuff to watch.

fossuser wrote at 2020-10-29 21:10:04:

And when you pay there's no ads (hulu has two options, but one is ad-free).

That's the biggest bit - with cable you pay a ton and still have to watch a crazy amount of ads.

I will never pay for a service that includes ads even if you pay.

lotsofpulp wrote at 2020-10-29 21:32:33:

I notice all the media that says no ads just included it as product placement. Sometimes it’s hidden well enough, but most time it’s a jarring shot of a logo or they talk about the product in a non natural way that takes you out of the story.

tracer4201 wrote at 2020-10-29 21:10:34:

I don’t know. I really liked the Boys on Amazon Prime. Except they now release one episode at a time. And Disney did the same thing with the Mandalorian. So yeah - I can’t binge watch new series. Watch anytime is more like a DVR feature.

Netflix has other problems. If there’s one or two seasons of a show, you don’t know if the show had a proper ending or if it was just cancelled.

JakeTheAndroid wrote at 2020-10-29 21:24:50:

I personally don't mind not getting the entire season at once. While I do want to binge, I also like the delayed gratification you get from watching a series spread out. Part of the reason I want to binge everything is because there is no new content. It's self defeating insofar that new content becomes old the same day it comes out.

And for a production company, churning through years of work in a day only to start demanding a second season has to be rough. I can't imagine it's helped studios in terms of timelines.

lotsofpulp wrote at 2020-10-29 21:16:39:

You have the entire back catalog. Obviously if something hasn't been released yet, then you can't watch it. If you wait until the episodes are released, then you can binge watch it.

That situation is unchanged from cable days.

And the Netflix issue is also unchanged from cable days.

My point is being able to click on something or search it and watch it is most definitely better than flipping channels and dealing with tv schedules and all that crap.

brianwawok wrote at 2020-10-29 21:18:09:

Start the series the day before the last episode? I purposefully didn’t watch game of thrones until like the 4th season.

actuator wrote at 2020-10-29 20:48:34:

Personal observations:

- No mention of YT subscription revenue? Does that mean it is low. Considering Netflix success, I am assuming there is a lot of ground to be gained there.

- GCP revenue at $3B seems quite low compared to even what MS reported. Their cloud(Azure + office?) revenue was $16B if I am not mistaken

- Dip in capital expenditure from $7 to $5 billion. I am assuming GCP and data center expansion went fine, but a lot of office related costs have been reduced.

bobviolier wrote at 2020-10-29 20:55:38:

30 million paid subscriptions it seems on youtube. Source:

https://twitter.com/mhbergen/status/1321918113370136576?s=19

ksec wrote at 2020-10-29 21:14:14:

Does that includes Youtube Music? Or is that a completely separate user count?

Spotify seems to be doing rather well in tough competition, I am happy :)

halflings wrote at 2020-10-29 21:26:48:

YouTube Premium covers both ad-free YouTube viewing _and_ YouTube Music. (so that number is likely for both)

notatoad wrote at 2020-10-29 21:28:16:

you can't get a paid youtube music account without youtube premium, so i'd assume that the premium subscription numbers include all the music subscribers too.

mcintyre1994 wrote at 2020-10-29 21:37:29:

FWIW AWS just reported $11.6 billion, so I'm guessing a big chunk of that MS cloud is Office. If they were very close to AWS with Azure alone then I think they'd split it out?

notyourwork wrote at 2020-10-29 20:53:16:

How much is office and how much Azure? I presume that’s a big part of the difference.

Regarding YT, it’s a different service than Netflix so not as comparable IMO.

actuator wrote at 2020-10-29 21:01:40:

YT is certainly different than Netflix but I would put YT above Netflix on potential.

I think YT is much more valuable to human civilization in general. If we consider it as a knowledge bank which has everything from learning a new recipe to something as specific as operating a drill to empowering content like lecture videos on coursework. Recently I saw professional quality BBC like nature documentaries on YT.

The importance of it is far more and that's why I think the subscription revenue potential is also far more.

Whether they can convince people to go ad free and pay for it is a different matter. My friend who pays for Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+, iCloud and a bunch of other subscriptions was complaining about YT ads. It boggled my mind that considering his usage, he didn't pay for the premium plan.

uniqueid wrote at 2020-10-29 21:30:50:

      YT is much more valuable to human civilization in general

Netflix might be a safer bet, for that reason. I think many people, including people with standing and influence, would prefer Earth's public repository of historical video not be under the control of one amoral, ad-driven monopoly.

Netflix still has competitors, and the stakes are lower.

warrenq wrote at 2020-10-29 22:55:22:

sure, let me know when you can learn programming, build a house, fix a car, decide which product to buy, or some of the greatest interviews and infinitely many things that are only on YT.

Bottomline, people who don't like YouTube are seriously underutilizing it's potential to change your life, make money, learn something

uniqueid wrote at 2020-10-30 14:20:24:

          "people who don't like YouTube"

Whether people like Youtube isn't that relevant to my comment. The argument for breaking up Bell's monopoly in the 1980s wasn't "I dislike telephony"

1_player wrote at 2020-10-30 08:35:05:

You have been shadow-banned, though your comment history is mostly OK. You might want to contact HN so they have a look at it.

For now I've restored your comment, I can't do much more than that.

lokar wrote at 2020-10-29 20:57:14:

I think it's safe to assume that Office is much much more than Azure, or they would break it out to look better.

marcinzm wrote at 2020-10-30 00:15:10:

Does GCP revenue include G-Suite subscriptions?

edit: Googling indicates it does which would means like Azure you don't know how much is from GCP vs. office suite.

elorant wrote at 2020-10-29 20:53:40:

Microsoft has a strong foothold in corporate services. Google will need decades to build something similar, if ever.

nogabebop23 wrote at 2020-10-29 21:01:40:

Google will need to learn what customer service is to get any traction in corporate land. I can get decent support from an actual person with a single MS subscription. With google for business we can't even get an email address.

kenhwang wrote at 2020-10-29 22:19:33:

More importantly, they need to understand legacy support and deprecation. AWS and MS have seller track records on backwards compatibility and EOL policies, while Google's feels worse than a garage startup at times.

secondo wrote at 2020-10-29 20:57:56:

Yes, and that’s what they’re doing through education with Chromebooks.

stingraycharles wrote at 2020-10-29 21:04:35:

Education with Chromebooks is their strategy to get a foothold in corporate services? Seriously?

I can’t tell if this is a joke or serious.

thomasrognon wrote at 2020-10-29 21:43:45:

Wasn't that a large part of Microsoft's strategy? I remember taking an "IT" class in high school in the early 00's that was 100% focused on learning MS Office. People bring what they know into the workplace.

colinmhayes wrote at 2020-10-30 03:47:40:

It absolutely is. I started using google suite in 5th grade when my school district gave everyone an account. There's effectively 0 chance of me switching to Microsoft now. They're creating life long customers before the customers are able to think for themselves.

numbsafari wrote at 2020-10-29 21:01:26:

It’s a disaster though, honestly. Their partners are not very good and the support is really weak from Google. And ChromeOS, as much as I wanted to love it, just isn’t very polished. I spent a year with it and really found it lacking.

The volume purchasing story is a mess when compared to Apple’s offering.

martin_bech wrote at 2020-10-29 21:05:19:

My kids school has chromebooks, but according to the kids, they are always out of power, and they suck, so all the kids bring their own iPad instead.

numbsafari wrote at 2020-10-29 23:23:41:

The Chrome Enterprise sales team basically forced us to work with a third-party reseller. I won't name them, because they were nice enough folks, and it's not their fault that Google hates their customers.

The forums for the reseller were full of school IT folks trying to figure out how to provision hundreds of machines at a time. You can pay the reseller $15/device to have them do it, but it adds and indeterminate delay in receiving your devices. Many of the staffers were talking about having in-service days where they brought in as many teachers and staff as they could get to do the provisioning part. Ridiculous.

I know a lot of people are upset about the changes that Apple is making to "lock down" Mac OS. However, in my opinion, the more Apple makes Mac OS locked down like Chrome OS, the better. Leave VMs as the "escape valve" for developers who need a CLI or POXIS apps. Parallels and VMware are a better, and more consistent experience than Mac OS anyway.

In an enterprise environment, Apple Business Manager volume purchasing hooked up with a device management solution like JAMF is just a no-brainer. The hardware is far more reliable, the purchasing and provisioning are dead simple, and there's no third-party resellers unless you really want to work with one.

ed. Also, ChromeOS is still lacking critical productivity tools. Someday we'll get there, but not just yet.

dmead wrote at 2020-10-29 21:08:53:

it's not that low. GCP is a distant third, nothing surprising there.

jhatax wrote at 2020-10-29 20:29:02:

Revenue growth across the board: advertising (YouTube) and other properties, Google Cloud leading the charge.

Based on Pinterest, FB earnings (and Twitter soon), it looks like ad sales have rebounded in a strong way.

actuator wrote at 2020-10-29 20:38:17:

I wonder what's replacing the ads from travel(hotels, flights, packages).

Stock seems 6% up after hours, that does make sense. It had relatively gained less compared to FB from pandemic lows.

pgoggijr wrote at 2020-10-29 20:43:42:

My youtube experience has consisted of about 50% political ads for a while now - would be interesting to see some insights into their total share of the pie.

jeffbee wrote at 2020-10-29 21:08:29:

The experience of ads on youtube must be misery. A YouTube sub is the best $15 you can spend.

eznzt wrote at 2020-10-29 21:25:23:

Or an ad blocker...

Nemant wrote at 2020-10-29 23:52:09:

They don't work, do they? I tried a few but nothing works. I'm on Chrome on Mac.

gpm wrote at 2020-10-30 03:06:43:

Unlock origin works for me, on chrome and firefox, Linux and windows.

andrewprock wrote at 2020-10-29 20:55:16:

You must live in a swing state. I get zero political ads in CA.

strulovich wrote at 2020-10-29 20:58:29:

Some people not in swing states such as I are getting endless ads to donate to campaigns.

mwambua wrote at 2020-10-29 21:06:35:

I've gotten quite a few political ads in the last few weeks. (CA with ad personalization turned off)

pgoggijr wrote at 2020-10-29 20:59:31:

I'm in New Jersey which is pretty consistently and firmly blue. Hammered with ads from both sides.

takeda wrote at 2020-10-29 21:08:27:

You don't get ads asking for donation?

CA appears to be politicians' (from both parties) ATM.

lern_too_spel wrote at 2020-10-29 21:07:33:

Proposition 22 ads everywhere.

grandmczeb wrote at 2020-10-29 21:19:14:

I just opened the YT app and a Joe Biden ad is literally the first thing I see at the top. I’m in CA.

city41 wrote at 2020-10-30 01:14:54:

And it seems the number of ads has increased a good deal. I tend to get a 2 ad block about every 4-6 minutes now.

elorant wrote at 2020-10-29 20:57:23:

_I wonder what's replacing the ads from travel(hotels, flights, packages)._

e-commerce, cooking apparatus and whatnot. Tupperware's stock has increased x15 since May. People spending more time at home leads them to cook and store food more often.

SpicyLemonZest wrote at 2020-10-29 21:05:23:

Although it's worth noting that Tupperware is also an MLM, so a lot of that 15x might not have much to do with their products as such.

howlgarnish wrote at 2020-10-30 03:25:17:

Comparison of the big three cloud players' earnings:

MS "Intelligent Cloud" $13.0B (Azure up 48% YoY but not broken out, rest is "server and cloud services" up 22% YoY)

AWS: $10.8B (up 28% YoY)

Google Cloud: $3.4B (up 45% YoY), includes Workspace (fka G Suite)

TL;DR: AWS is still #1, but Azure is catching up fast and Google is growing faster too.

donor20 wrote at 2020-10-30 04:32:49:

Half of the GCP revenue may be workspaces / gsuite - which would make GCP tiny by comparison to AWS. I'm really surprised at how low those numbers are for google cloud.

oyra wrote at 2020-10-29 22:03:01:

so how much revenue of this 'tech' giant come from the tech? 1% or 1.4%?

gigatexal wrote at 2020-10-29 21:30:55:

Anyone spot the line item where they pay Apple the billions for default placement on iOS?

gundmc wrote at 2020-10-29 21:50:59:

I'm not sure if you're just trying to stir the pot, but it's included as TAC (traffic acquisition costs) and has clearly been reported every quarter for years.

totalZero wrote at 2020-10-29 22:02:15:

Pretty sure it's just an attempt to stir the pot. The user made a similar comment on the submission for Apple's earnings.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24936191

vaccinator wrote at 2020-10-30 00:47:14:

Nobody answered the first time

gigatexal wrote at 2020-10-30 02:49:30:

Not trying to stir the pot just not so great at reading financial statements. Seriously not trolling here I was merely trying to verify the news headlines in the financials

donor20 wrote at 2020-10-30 04:34:33:

The news is making a big deal about "secret" traffic aquisition costs - but the financials have covered these costs in a lot of detail over time - so it's not really new news. All the other players do / have done the same thing.

Bing is probably paying Duck Duck Go? Yahoo may have paid mozilla for firefox traffic etc.