Another great article from 404 Media highlighting the power that the tech giants have amassed over how how we use the internet.
This brings me, I think, to the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Google has its hands on quite literally every aspect of this entire saga as a vertically integrated adtech giant.
This extreme power over the adtech and online advertising ecosystem is one of the subjects of an FTC antitrust suit against Google.
YouTube was originally free, and without video ads. It remained so for some time after Google bought it. They can operate YouTube without video ads at all.
YouTube lived off venture capital, search sponsorships, and content hosting. Venture capital is long dried up. Search sponsorships are just advertisements but clogging your searches. Content hosting isn’t really needed anymore since every large media company has their own streaming platform. Lot has changed since 2006.
What?! Have you checked how big a 4k video is lately? Where do you suppose the money for that should come from?
Who decided to provide 4K video? (Hint: it wasn’t me.)
1080p did nothing wrong
Good thing people didn’t freak out when they tested putting 4k videos behind membership