Indeed. It's very much the Amazon model: lose money as long as necessary, even if that's 'forever', in order to be the one key player in the sector and be recognized as such.
The stock market absolutely does not think some schmoe with a Raspberry Pi constitutes 'competition' to YouTube, and I think they're right in that assessment. Sometimes power isn't just 'getting paid money': everybody knows you shop Amazon to buy stuff over the internet, everybody knows you put up videos on YouTube, search with Google, etc.
I think the difference between this and something like MySpace is, the heavy hitters today have figured out they can't risk the slightest betrayal of that 'category killer' instinct. YouTube will function as a monopoly at all costs, no matter how much money they lost, and part of this behavior is so they can retain a lock on the big advertisers even if that's not keeping them in the black: it would be much worse if the big advertisers decided some other platform was relevant, and Youtube was MySpace or Geocities.
Hence, this situation. Right now, it's safer for them to whack a bunch of content creators (and manipulate the climate for what goes on their platform) than it is to alienate advertisers. Not because they're doing that great off the advertisers (it's a failing model), but because they must continue to appear to advertisers like they're the only platform in the world.
The stock market absolutely does not think some schmoe with a Raspberry Pi constitutes 'competition' to YouTube, and I think they're right in that assessment. Sometimes power isn't just 'getting paid money': everybody knows you shop Amazon to buy stuff over the internet, everybody knows you put up videos on YouTube, search with Google, etc.
I think the difference between this and something like MySpace is, the heavy hitters today have figured out they can't risk the slightest betrayal of that 'category killer' instinct. YouTube will function as a monopoly at all costs, no matter how much money they lost, and part of this behavior is so they can retain a lock on the big advertisers even if that's not keeping them in the black: it would be much worse if the big advertisers decided some other platform was relevant, and Youtube was MySpace or Geocities.
Hence, this situation. Right now, it's safer for them to whack a bunch of content creators (and manipulate the climate for what goes on their platform) than it is to alienate advertisers. Not because they're doing that great off the advertisers (it's a failing model), but because they must continue to appear to advertisers like they're the only platform in the world.