This is a very European attitude. IDK what it is about Europe, but the pervasive business mindset seems to be to jump to the conclusion that things aren’t possible before even brainstorming the options. Nothing is ever possible in Europe. A bookshop can’t possibly compete with Amazon in France (despite damn near every small town I’ve visited in the US having a successful independent bookseller) without government help. European businesses could never succeed because Americans sell ads. Stop making excuses for businesses and actually try to compete.
Options for EuroTube:
- sell ads with a focus on European content
- sell privacy
- sell better creative control and/or get really great at microsubscriptions
- sell in-country hosting of content
- sell as a “green” hosting alternative
- sell better software with a better experience/creator tools
- sell better streaming (compete with Twitch)
- sell region-specific hand-curation
There are competitors to YouTube that are successful, there are competitors that have created new categories, etc.
Heck, it doesn’t even have to really be all that competitive, at least give Europeans an equivalent-quality option and the impetus to buy local/but European should be enough to carve out a niche.
Why would you want to create an alternative to Youtube anyway? Streaming videos for free is a terrible business model YT itself still wasn’t profitable back in 2015 (and Google stopped releasing figures after that) for all we know Google might still be subsidizing it, in any case it took at least 10 years for it to break even.
Probably to avoid the national/continental embarrassment of relying on the Americans for every basic piece of technology European society depends on. The original comment was about how government websites rely on YouTube to host their content. I guess there’s also a case for not subjecting European citizens to the perils of Google’s data collection efforts, or the government’s content to the moderation whims of YouTube’s algorithms.
This is part 2 of the dirty duo of European business attitudes: “why even bother?” Nothing is ever worth doing in Europe, an unfruitful complement to the belief that nothing is possible in Europe.
Sorry, honestly but you sound to me like of this “European” attitude you’re fighting against. Basically you’re suggesting investing large amounts of public money (because no sane VC would invest enough capital to build an alternative YT) not driven by actual business needs (you know that you can just host videos directly on tour own server?) but instead some weird ideas about avoiding “national embarrassment”.
If European citizens valued their data enough, preferred hosting their videos on EU servers etc. and were willing to pay extra for this such a service would already exist, but they don’t. Given the current consumer preferences no independent free video streaming could compete with YT unless Google was broken up into multiple companies.
> If European citizens valued their data enough, preferred hosting their videos on EU servers etc. and were willing to pay extra for this such a service would already exist, but they don’t.
The same could be said for anything that doesn’t always exist.
> because no sane VC would invest enough capital to build an alternative YT
Perhaps no European VC. The premise of a VC is that you fund things that aren’t a sure bet, on the hopes that a few ventures will be successful. VC has always been high-risk, high-reward, and you don’t need to start at YouTube scale. It is possible to start with modest funding and grow from there.
> Given the current consumer preferences no independent free video streaming could compete with YT unless Google was broken up into multiple companies.
Vimeo continues to exist. As does DailyMotion. As does twitch. As do Chinese alternatives.
So you’re saying that it’s illegal for a company to subsidize it’s unprofitable products by using funds from more successful products? Because that’s basically what’s Google business model was from the beginning (i.e. release a bunch of free stuff to tie in users into their ecosystem and gather their data) : Gmail, Maps, Docs, Chrome are illegal because they are/were subsidized by the Search/Ads business?
Have dumping laws ever been actually applied to software?
That is my understabding of what dumping laws mean.
Many laws have not been properly tested on software, even ownership of data is still sketchy.
I am saying that, as scrutiny of software conpanies increases, and a new generation of lawmakers comes in that has some computer literacy, chances that any dumping laws will be applied increase dramatically
Options for EuroTube:
- sell ads with a focus on European content - sell privacy - sell better creative control and/or get really great at microsubscriptions - sell in-country hosting of content - sell as a “green” hosting alternative - sell better software with a better experience/creator tools - sell better streaming (compete with Twitch) - sell region-specific hand-curation
There are competitors to YouTube that are successful, there are competitors that have created new categories, etc.
Heck, it doesn’t even have to really be all that competitive, at least give Europeans an equivalent-quality option and the impetus to buy local/but European should be enough to carve out a niche.
Stop. Making. Excuses. For. Businesses.