More YouTube Data
December 10, 2008
Mark Cuban, blog maverick, wrote “YouTube’s Desperation.” You can read the article here. Mr. Cuban wrote a thoughtful analysis of the challenges YouTube presents to Google’s management. Mr. Cuban’s discussion of YouTube options is also interesting. He identifies two options. First, keep spending money, a lot of money. Or, split YouTube into two sites. One site would host user generated content; the other, commercial content. I may be simplifying Mr. Cuban’s analysis, and I suggest you read his remarks directly. I don’t want to pull a quote from context because that might distort his point of view.
For me, the most interesting part of the article was the run down of YouTube facts. Google does not provide much information about its services. I am not comfortable latching on to these data as 100 percent accurate, but I found them quite interesting. Here’s my summary of the juicy data in Mr. Cuban’s write up:
- Google receives 13 gigabytes of YouTube content every second
- “At .12 cents per gbs, thats [sic] about 5mm dollars per year in upload costs,” wrote Mr. Cuban
- “If over the coarse [sic] of a year, each of that video is watched 100 times, thats another $500mm in bandwidth costs,” added Mr. Cuban.
With the Viacom lawsuit chugging forward, Google may have to use some of its nifty monetization inventions disclosed in its patent documents. If YouTube cannot be monetized, Google may have to make some tough decisions about the service. Video search is a separate service, but the costs are almost certain to continue to rise.
When the YouTube deal was announced, Mr. Cuban was an early critic. At least he did not write an “I told you so” line in his Web log post.
Stephen Arnold, December 7, 2008
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
