The longer I use youtube while signed in, the more useless it becomes to me. I have a wide range of interests. If I'm watching the Dead Skeletons - Dead Mantra music video, it's not helpful to have 5 Starcraft 2 VODs in the recommended video list (i.e. I enjoy watching professional Starcraft 2). I'd much prefer recommendations similar to the Dead Skeletons. I've found no way to turn off this recommendation bubble and have since decided youtube is best used without an account if you want to actually explore its content.
It's really goddamned frustrating and just shows how hollow google is as a company.
They have search and ads, and an utter inability to actually build anything else or connect with a customer base. For a company this is like having cancer. It's astounding that they can ignore the situation to such a degree.
Youtube is already an amazing force in the world, and that's with google half-assing so much of it. With enough work it could be a multi-billion dollar business and the next generation of media. Instead it'll probably take years while individuals and 3rd parties figure out ways to do what google fails to do (make content more explorable and discoverable, for one, make paid revenue models possible, for another) for them to catch on and build the functionality into youtube directly.
Meanwhile, instead of building improvements they're paying this stupid google plus strategy tax.
Google is chasing facebook when they should be chasing HBO, and amazon, and the discovery channel. It's like they live in a giant mansion with a huge lawn where a bunch of super talented people have been camping out for a while, trying to figure out how to make the next generation of video work. And everyday google gets out of bed, looks out over that scene, grunts, scratches its ass, thinks maybe they should just call the cops to get rid of the hooligans, then goes off to watch Judge Judy.
"Google is chasing facebook when they should be chasing HBO, and amazon, and the discovery channel. It's like they live in a giant mansion with a huge lawn where a bunch of super talented people have been camping out for a while, trying to figure out how to make the next generation of video work. And everyday google gets out of bed, looks out over that scene, grunts, scratches its ass, thinks maybe they should just call the cops to get rid of the hooligans, then goes off to watch Judge Judy."
I really like the way you put that.
This is a result of perhaps super success at an early age (the founders), not enough hunger (to much money), hiring what you think are the best and the brightest (surprise - all those tests don't really work as our high achievers who designed them thought they would) and not recognizing the role of luck in your previous success. Used to be known in the past as becoming "fat and lazy" - I think that was the saying.
I had typed up something similar already but abandoned the post.
But that's pretty much exactly it. Google managed to build something early on that is difficult to compete with, and now they are resting on it. The company revenues are split up into 3 parts: search/ads, backbone internet, and "other". Where "other" is a tiny fraction of the whole that is almost inconsequential to their profit margin.
It's a "problem" that a lot of companies have where they are in a position where revenue is actually too easy. That may seem like a blessing but it has many downsides and typically chokes growth potential. The consequences for failure at a functional company are usually pretty significant. If SpaceX builds a rocket that doesn't work or if Toyota builds a car that absolutely nobody wants that hurts the bottom line. And it drives the company to do better. But at google what are the consequences? If someone at google makes an unprofitable product, well, that's the norm. It just gets tossed in the "other" bin with everything else and everyone laughs and goes back to their free lunches and complementary massages.
It's a romper room filled with nerf toys. And many folks at google are seemingly content to luxuriate in that environment. Why would anyone at google willingly push themselves out into the cold, unforgiving, and desolate world of real-world business where actions have serious consequences when they can just futz around in the "other" play room, slap ads on their "products" and call it a day?
Google has no drive to make youtube the best it can be. And the same goes for gdocs, gmail, app engine, or any other thing they make.
I've always had this theory that a company that operates as you say with the examples of SpaceX or Toyota, one that life is never easy for (that can't rest on their laurels) really operates in a way that is much more motivating.
Another example would be the entertainment industry. Or I guess advertising industry or sports team...
Creative or highly competitive. Because you can't hit it so big that the losses don't matter. You are only as good as your last hit film, tv show, or game win.
Google has this tremendous cash cow.
Warren Buffett has plenty of cash. But for him the game is taking that cash and trying to get more cash. (And of course keeping up the image of being Warren Buffett drives him as well). And he has competition for his investment dollars as well.
The interesting thing is that google started out as such a company. Search was a very different business in the '90s. Google came in with their revolutionary way of doing IT/datacenters, their hard-CS centered coding, and their excellent search algorithms and they wiped the floor with everyone. They pioneered a new business model with usable search that was fast and low cost, making it more easily directly monetizable (instead of having to draw in more page views through "portals" and whatnot).
But then they succeeded so quickly that they haven't had that same level of hunger to actually do something risky that needed to succeed. Today google is just as likely to shut down an old project than to launch something new.
I totally agree with you on this. It is mind boggling.
We are resorting to working on a platform for video discovery and monetization, since we just got disgusted as both content creators on YouTube and also as consumers (and found so many other people have the same disgust).
This is the thing that bothers/scares me the most about this balkanization of the internet that's happening. You end up getting forced into bubbles that someone else has decided you belong in. And if you don't know it's happening, you can't even try to stop it. For me, I have not found utility in the things that have been selected for me, so most of these services are becoming useless. All those "smartest guys in the room" at places like Facebook and Google and Wherever are really fucking up if their goal was to direct me to things I like and might pay money for.
Not that black and white and you know it. These services are obiqutous. It's sometimes impossible to ignore them and they do in fact provide a great experience (the best really) in many ways. That doesn't mean they don't have faults and it doesn't mean people who use these services should simply ignore said faults or move away from them completely.
Pretty sure that's incorrect. If I want to rate an app I purchased on Google Play with my Google account, with my Google smartphone, I need to post that review to Google+ even if I don't use or have a Google+ profile. That is lame, because I am forced to create a profile and use Google+ (in addition to having a basic Google account where my credit card and email are) just to submit a feedback score to the developer of the app.
Google forces its way between the task I'm undertaking - leaving a rating, and their Buzz 2.0 product which has nothing to do with me leaving a rating on an app I have paid money for.
Google can force whatever it likes on users as defaults, and I won't care one bit if they just allow options for users to change those default settings. Eg "don't use Google+", "don't hide editable subject field in the compose new message gmail window".
Well, then you're put in the bubble of people who don't use the offending service.
And ... this may be news to you, but every once in a while a large bubbling company may actually buy some upstart service where their own attempts at NIH entry into a niche fail.
You know, like Google buying YouTube in the first place.
Yes, but incognito mode doesn't set itself up automatically when clicking on a link in an email, for example, whereas with the cookie-blocking solution, it's always on.
I Agree. I miss the time when I could control what I search and find anything in any part of the world in any language.
Now they believe that because I live in Spain I have to speak Spanish, or be interested first in Spanish stupid things, or be only interested on the topics I searched in the past.
Now while using gmail I search with Bing, so it does not mess anything.
Came here to second that. I live in Austria. Google pretends that all I am interesteed in has to be in the German language, somewhere nearby where I live and all sort of assumptions. Recently the Internet has become a small world for me.
http://www.google.com/ncr (no country redirect). Gets saved in a cookie. No more local search.
That's in case you get redirected to google.at or the like.
Thanks for this. I used to visit Canada a lot and if I ever used my laptop up there I'd have to contend with all my default search settings being switched to google.ca for a while.
doesn't help with google not providing relevant search results anymore, and usually half the first page of results isn't even for the keywords I searched.
After having deleted everything from my old non-Google account, I decided to stop using YouTube logged in. Everything is so much better, the only thing I hate is how I can't give likes to videos. Everything else is okay, brings back the exploration aspect that made YouTube fun.
