The Only Dataset Search Tool: What Does That Tell Us about Google?
April 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
If you like semi-jazzy, academic write ups, you will revel in “Discovering Datasets on the Web Scale: Challenges and Recommendations for Google Dataset Search.” The write up appears in a publication associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s favorite university. It may be worth noting that MIT and Google have teamed to offer a free course in Artificial Intelligence. That is the next big thing which does hallucinate at times while creating considerable marketing angst among the techno-giants jousting to emerge as the go-to source of the technology.
Back to the write up. Google created a search tool to allow a user to locate datasets accessible via the Internet. There are more than 700 data brokers in the US. These outfits will sell data to most people who can pony up the cash. Examples range from six figure fees for the Twitter stream to a few hundred bucks for boat license holders in states without much water.
The write up says:
Our team at Google developed Dataset Search, which differs from existing dataset search tools because of its scope and openness: potentially any dataset on the web is in scope.
A very large, money oriented creature enjoins a worker to gather data. If someone asks, “Why?”, the monster says, “Make up something.” Thanks MSFT Copilot. How is your security today? Oh, that’s too bad.
The write up does the academic thing of citing articles which talk about data on the Web. There is even a table which organizes the types of data discovery tools. The categorization of general and specific is brilliant. Who would have thought there were two categories of a vertical search engine focused on Web-accessible data. I thought there was just one category; namely, gettable. The idea is that if the data are exposed, take them. Asking permission just costs time and money. The idea is that one can apologize and keep the data.
The article includes a Googley graphic. The French portal, the Italian “special” portal, and the Harvard “dataverse” are identified. Were there other Web accessible collections? My hunch is that Google’s spiders such down as one famous Googler said, “All” the world’s information. I will leave it to your imagination to fill in other sources for the dataset pages. (I want to point out that Google has some interesting technology related to converting data sets into normalized data structures. If you are curious about the patents, just write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com, and one of my researchers will send along a couple of US patent numbers. Impressive system and method.)
The section “Making Sense of Heterogeneous Datasets” is peculiar. First, the Googlers discovered the basic fact of data from different sources — The data structures vary. Think in terms of grapes and deer droppings. Second, the data cannot be “trusted.” There is no fix to this issue for the team writing the paper. Third, the authors appear to be unaware of the patents I mentioned, particularly the useful example about gathering and normalizing data about digital cameras. The method applies to other types of processed data as well.
I want to jump to the “beyond metadata” idea. This is the mental equivalent of “popping” up a perceptual level. Metadata are quite important and useful. (Isn’t it odd that Google strips high value metadata from its search results; for example, time and data?) The authors of the paper work hard to explain that the Google approach to data set search adds value by grouping, sorting, and tagging with information not in any one data set. This is common sense, but the Googley spin on this is to build “trust.” Remember: This is an alleged monopolist engaged in online advertising and co-opting certain Web services.
Several observations:
- This is another of Google’s high-class PR moves. Hooking up with MIT and delivering razz-ma-tazz about identifying spiderable content collections in the name of greater good is part of the 2024 Code Red playbook it seems. From humble brag about smart software to crazy assertions like quantum supremacy, today’s Google is a remarkable entity
- The work on this “project” is divorced from time. I checked my file of Google-related information, and I found no information about the start date of a vertical search engine project focused on spidering and indexing data sets. My hunch is that it has been in the works for a while, although I can pinpoint 2006 as a year in which Google’s technology wizards began to talk about building master data sets. Why no time specifics?
- I found the absence of AI talk notable. Perhaps Google does not think a reader will ask, “What’s with the use of these data? I can’t use this tool, so why spend the time, effort, and money to index information from a country like France which is not one of Google’s biggest fans. (Paris was, however, the roll out choice for the answer to Microsoft and ChatGPT’s smart software announcement. Plus that presentation featured incorrect information as I recall.)
Net net: I think this write up with its quasi-academic blessing is a bit of advance information to use in the coming wave of litigation about Google’s use of content to train its AI systems. This is just a hunch, but there are too many weirdnesses in the academic write up to write off as intern work or careless research writing which is more difficult in the wake of the stochastic monkey dust up.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2024
Google: The DMA Makes Us Harm Small Business
April 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I cannot estimate the number of hours Googlers invested in crafting the short essay “New Competition Rules Come with Trade-Offs.” I find it a work of art. Maybe not the equal of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, but is is darned close.
A deity, possibly associated with the quantumly supreme, reassures a human worried about life. Words are reality, at least to some fretful souls. Thanks MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
The essay pivots on unarticulated and assumed “truths.” Particularly charming are these:
- “We introduced these types of Google Search features to help consumers”
- “These businesses now have to connect with customers via a handful of intermediaries that typically charge large commissions…”
- “We’ve always been focused on improving Google Search….”
The first statement implies that Google’s efforts have been the “help.” Interesting: I find Google search often singularly unhelpful, returning results for malware, biased information, and Google itself.
The second statement indicates that “intermediaries” benefit. Isn’t Google an intermediary? Isn’t Google an alleged monopolist in online advertising?
The third statement is particularly quantumly supreme. Note the word “always.” John Milton uses such verbal efflorescence when describing God. Yes, “always” and improving. I am tremulous.
Consider this lyrical passage and the elegant logic of:
We’ll continue to be transparent about our DMA compliance obligations and the effects of overly rigid product mandates. In our view, the best approach would ensure consumers can continue to choose what services they want to use, rather than requiring us to redesign Search for the benefit of a handful of companies.
Transparent invokes an image of squeaky clean glass in a modern, aluminum-framed window, scientifically sealed to prevent its unauthorized opening or repair by anyone other than a specially trained transparency provider. I like the use of the adjective “rigid” because it implies a sturdiness which may cause the transparent window to break when inclement weather (blasts of hot and cold air from oratorical emissions) stress the see-through structures. The adult-father-knows-best reference in “In our view, the best approach”. Very parental. Does this suggest the EU is childish?
Net net: Has anyone compiled the Modern Book of Google Myths?
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2024
One Google Gem: Reflections about a Digital Zircon
April 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have a Google hat, and I don’t think I will wear it to my local burrito restaurant. I just read “The Beginning of the End?” That’s a snappy title for End of Times’s types, but the sub-title is a corker:
More of us are moving away from Google towards TikTok and AI chatbots — as research reveals that the golden era of search engines may well be over
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How are you coming with your security? Good enough, perhaps?
The most interesting assertion in the essay is that generative AI (the software that writes résumés for RIF’ed blue chip consultants and SEO professionals) is not particularly good. Doesn’t everyone make up facts today? I think that’s popular with college presidents, but I may be wrong because I am thinking about Harvard and Stanford at the moment. I noted this statement:
The surveys reveal that the golden era of search engines might be coming to an end, as consumers increasingly turn towards AI chatbots for their information needs. However, as Chris Sheehan, SVP Strategic Accounts and AI at Applause sums up, “Chatbots are getting better at dealing with toxicity, bias and inaccuracy – however, concerns still remain. Not surprisingly, switching between chatbots to accomplish different tasks is common, while multimodal capabilities are now table stakes. To gain further adoption, chatbots need to continue to train models on quality data in specific domains and thoroughly test across a diverse user base to drive down toxicity and inaccuracy.”
Well, by golly, I am not going to dispute the chatbot subject with an expert from Applause. (Give me a hand, please.) I would like to capture these observations:
- Google is an example of what happens when the high school science club gets aced by a group with better PR. Yep, I am thinking about MSFT’s OpenAI, Mistral, and Inflection deals. The outputs may be wonky, but the buzz has been consistent for more than a year. Tinnitus can drive some creatures to distraction.
- Google does a wonderful job delivering Smoothies to regulators in the US and the EU. However, engineering wizards can confuse a calm demeanor and Teflon talk with real managerial and creative capabilities. Nope. Smooth and running a company while innovating are a potentially harmful mixture.
- The challenge of cost control remains a topic few Google experts want to discuss. Even the threat of a flattening or, my goodness, a decline will alter the priorities of those wizards in charge. I was reviewing my notes about what makes Google tick, and the theme in my notes for the last 15 years appears to be money. Money intake, money capture, money in certain employees’ pockets, money for lobbyists, and money for acquisitions, etc. etc.
Net net: Criticizing Google through the filter of ChatGPT is interesting, but the Google lacks the managerial talent to make lemonade from lemons or money from a single alleged monopoly. Thus, consultant surveys and flawed smart software are interesting, but they miss the point of what ails Googzilla: Cost control, regulations, and its PR magnet losing its attraction.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2024
Do Not Assume Googzilla Is Heading to the Monster Retirement Village
April 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Google is a ubiquitous tool. It’s used for than searching the Internet. Google and its associated tools have become an indispensable part of modern society. Some technology experts say that AI search engines and generative content tools will kill Google, but others disagree because of its Swiss army knife application. The Verge explores how Google will probably withstand an AI onslaught in: “Here’s Why AI Search Engines Really Can’t Kill Google.”
The article’s author David Pierce pitted Google and AI search against how each performed search’s three basic tasks. Navigation is the first task and it’s the most popular one. Users type in a Web site and want the search results to spit out the correct address. Google completes this task without a hitch, while AI search engines return information about the Web site and the desired address is buried within the top results.
The second task is an information query, like weather, sport scores, temperature, or the time. AI engines stink when it comes to returning real time information. Google probably already has the information about you, not to mention it is connected to real time news sources, weather services, and sports media. The AI engines were useful for evergreen information, such as how many weeks are in a year. However, the AI engines couldn’t confer about the precise number. One said 52.143 weeks, another said 52 and mentioned leap year, and a third said it was 52 plus a few days. Price had to conduct additional research to find the correct answer. Google won this task again because it had speed.
This was useful:
“There is one sub-genre of information queries in which the exact opposite is true, though. I call them Buried Information Queries. The best example I can offer is the very popular query, “how to screenshot on mac.” There are a million pages on the internet that contain the answer — it’s just Cmd-Shift-3 to take the whole screen or Cmd-Shift-4 to capture a selection, there, you’re welcome — but that information is usually buried under a lot of ads and SEO crap. All the AI tools I tried, including Google’s own Search Generative Experience, just snatch that information out and give it to you directly.”
The third task is exploration queries for more in-depth research. These range from researching history, tourist attractions, how to complete a specific task, medical information, and more. Google completed the tasks but AI search engines were better. AI search engines provided citations paired with images and useful information about the queries. It’s similar to reading a blurb in an encyclopedia or how-to manual.
Google is still the search champion but the AI search engines have useful abilities. The best idea would be to combine Google’s speed, real time, and consumable approach with AI engines’ information quality. It will happen one day but probably not in 2024.
Whitney Grace, April 9, 2024
Angling to Land the Big Google Fish: A Humblebrag Quest to Be CEO?
April 3, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
My goodness, the staff and alums of DeepMind have been in the news. Wherever there are big bucks or big buzz opportunities, one will find the DeepMind marketing machinery. Consider “Can Demis Hassabis Save Google?” The headline has two messages for me. The first is that a “real” journalist things that Google is in big trouble. Big trouble translates to stakeholder discontent. That discontent means it is time to roll in a new Top Dog. I love poohbahing. But opining that the Google is in trouble. Sure, it was aced by the Microsoft-OpenAI play not too long ago. But the Softies have moved forward with the Mistral deal and the mysterious Inflection deal . But the Google has money, market share, and might. Jake Paul can say he wants the Mike Tyson death stare. But that’s an opinion until Mr. Tyson hits Mr. Paul in the face.
The second message in the headline that one of the DeepMind tribe can take over Google, defeat Microsoft, generate new revenues, avoid regulatory purgatory, and dodge the pain of its swinging door approach to online advertising revenue generation; that is, people pay to get in, people pay to get out, and soon will have to subscribe to watch those entering and exiting the company’s advertising machine.
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Nice fish.
What are the points of the essay which caught my attention other than the headline for those clued in to the Silicon Valley approach to “real” news? Let me highlight a few points.
First, here’s a quote from the write up:
Late on chatbots, rife with naming confusing, and with an embarrassing image generation fiasco just in the rearview mirror, the path forward won’t be simple. But Hassabis has a chance to fix it. To those who known him, have worked alongside him, and still do — all of whom I’ve spoken with for this story — Hassabis just might be the perfect person for the job. “We’re very good at inventing new breakthroughs,” Hassabis tells me. “I think we’ll be the ones at the forefront of doing that again in the future.”
Is the past a predictor of future success? More than lab-to-Android is going to be required. But the evaluation of the “good at inventing new breakthroughs” is an assertion. Google has been in the me-too business for a long time. The company sees itself as a modern Bell Labs and PARC. I think that the company’s perception of itself, its culture, and the comments of its senior executives suggest that the derivative nature of Google is neither remembered nor considered. It’s just “we’re very good.” Sure “we” are.
Second, I noted this statement:
Ironically, a breakthrough within Google — called the transformer model — led to the real leap. OpenAI used transformers to build its GPT models, which eventually powered ChatGPT. Its generative ‘large language’ models employed a form of training called “self-supervised learning,” focused on predicting patterns, and not understanding their environments, as AlphaGo did. OpenAI’s generative models were clueless about the physical world they inhabited, making them a dubious path toward human level intelligence, but would still become extremely powerful. Within DeepMind, generative models weren’t taken seriously enough, according to those inside, perhaps because they didn’t align with Hassabis’s AGI priority, and weren’t close to reinforcement learning. Whatever the rationale, DeepMind fell behind in a key area.
Google figured something out and then did nothing with the “insight.” There were research papers and chatter. But OpenAI (powered in part by Sam AI-Man) used the Google invention and used it to carpet bomb, mine, and set on fire Google’s presumed lead in anything related to search, retrieval, and smart software. The aftermath of the Microsoft OpenAI PR coup is a continuing story of rehabilitation. From what I have seen, Google needs more time getting its ageingbody parts working again. The ad machine produces money, but the company reels from management issue to management issue with alarming frequency. Biased models complement spats with employees. Silicon Valley chutzpah causes neurological spasms among US and EU regulators. Something is broken, and I am not sure a person from inside the company has the perspective, knowledge, and management skills to fix an increasingly peculiar outfit. (Yes, I am thinking of ethnically-incorrect German soldiers loyal to a certain entity on Google’s list of questionable words and phrases.)
And, lastly, let’s look at this statement in the essay:
Many of those who know Hassabis pine for him to become the next CEO, saying so in their conversations with me. But they may have to hold their breath. “I haven’t heard that myself,” Hassabis says after I bring up the CEO talk. He instantly points to how busy he is with research, how much invention is just ahead, and how much he wants to be part of it. Perhaps, given the stakes, that’s right where Google needs him. “I can do management,” he says, ”but it’s not my passion. Put it that way. I always try to optimize for the research and the science.”
I wonder why the author of the essay does not query Jeff Dean, the former head of a big AI unit in Mother Google’s inner sanctum about Mr. Hassabis? How about querying Mr. Hassabis’ co-founder of DeepMind about Mr. Hassabis’ temperament and decision-making method? What about chasing down former employees of DeepMind and getting those wizards’ perspective on what DeepMind can and cannot accomplish.
Net net: Somewhere in the little-understood universe of big technology, there is an invisible hand pointing at DeepMind and making sure the company appears in scientific publications, the trade press, peer reviewed journals, and LinkedIn funded content. Determining what’s self-delusion, fact, and PR wordsmithing is quite difficult.
Google may need some help. To be frank, I am not sure anyone in the Google starting line up can do the job. I am also not certain that a blue chip consulting firm can do much either. Google, after a quarter century of zero effective regulation, has become larger than most government agencies. Its institutional mythos creates dozens of delusional Ulysses who cannot separate fantasies of the lotus eaters from the gritty reality of the company as one of the contributors to the problems facing youth, smaller businesses, governments, and cultural norms.
Google is Googley. It will resist change.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2024
Google Mandates YouTube AI Content Be Labeled: Accurately? Hmmmm
April 2, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The rules for proper use of AI-generated content are still up in the air, but big tech companies are already being pressured to induct regulations. Neowin reported that “Google Is Requiring YouTube Creators To Post Labels For Realistic AI-Created Content” on videos. This is a smart idea in the age of misinformation, especially when technology can realistically create images and sounds.
Google first announced the new requirement for realistic AI-content in November 2023. The YouTube’s Creator Studio now has a tool in the features to label AI-content. The new tool is called “Altered content” and asks creators yes and no questions. Its simplicity is similar to YouTube’s question about whether a video is intended for children or not. The “Altered content” label applies to the following:
• “Makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn’t say or do
• Alters footage of a real event or place
• Generates a realistic-looking scene that didn’t actually occur”
The article goes on to say:
“The blog post states that YouTube creators don’t have to label content made by generative AI tools that do not look realistic. One example was “someone riding a unicorn through a fantastical world.” The same applies to the use of AI tools that simply make color or lighting changes to videos, along with effects like background blur and beauty video filters.”
Google says it will have enforcement measures if creators consistently don’t label their realistic AI videos, but the consequences are specified. YouTube will also reserve the right to place labels on videos. There will also be a reporting system viewers can use to notify YouTube of non-labeled videos. It’s not surprising that Google’s algorithms can’t detect realistic videos from fake. Perhaps the algorithms are outsmarting their creators.
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2024
A Single, Glittering Google Gem for 27 March 2024
March 27, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
So many choices. But one gem outshines the others. Google’s search generative experience is generating publicity. The old chestnut may be true. Any publicity is good publicity. I would add a footnote. Any publicity about Google’s flawed smart software is probably good for Microsoft and other AI competitors. Google definitely looks as though it has some behaviors that are — how shall I phrase it? — questionable. No, maybe, ill-considered. No, let’s go with bungling. That word has a nice ring to it. Bungling.
I learned about this gem in “Google’s New AI Search Results Promotes Sites Pushing Malware, Scams.” The write up asserts:
Google’s new AI-powered ‘Search Generative Experience’ algorithms recommend scam sites that redirect visitors to unwanted Chrome extensions, fake iPhone giveaways, browser spam subscriptions, and tech support scams.
The technique which gets the user from the quantumly supreme Google to the bad actor goodies is redirects. Some user notification functions to pump even more inducements toward the befuddled user. (See, bungling and befuddled. Alliteration.)
Why do users fall for these bad actor gift traps? It seems that Google SGE conversational recommendations sound so darned wonderful, Google users just believe that the GOOG cares about the information it presents to those who “trust” the company. k
The write up points out that the DeepMinded Google provided this information about the bumbling SGE:
"We continue to update our advanced spam-fighting systems to keep spam out of Search, and we utilize these anti-spam protections to safeguard SGE," Google told BleepingComputer. "We’ve taken action under our policies to remove the examples shared, which were showing up for uncommon queries."
Isn’t that reassuring? I wonder if the anecdote about this most recent demonstration of the Google’s wizardry will become part of the Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Act?
This is a gem. It combines Google’s management process, word salad frippery, and smart software into one delightful bouquet. There you have it: Bungling, befuddled, bumbling, and bouquet. I am adding blundering. I do like butterfingered, however.
Stephen E Arnold, March 27, 2024
Google: Practicing But Not Learning in France
March 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I had to comment on this Google synthetic gems. The online advertising company with the Cracker Jack management team is cranking out titbits every days or two. True, none of these rank with the Microsoft deal to hire some techno-management wizards with DeepMind experience, but I have to cope with what flows into rural Kentucky.
Those French snails are talkative — and tasty. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Are you going to license, hire, or buy DeepMind?
“Google Fined $270 Million by French Regulatory Authority” delivers what strikes me a Lego block information about the estimable company. The write up presents yet another story about Google’s footloose and fancy free approach to French laws, rules, and regulations. The write up reports:
This latest fine is the result of Google’s artificial intelligence training practices. The [French regulatory] watchdog said in a statement that Google’s Bard chatbot — which has since been rebranded as Gemini —”used content from press agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, without notifying either them” or the Authority.
So what did the outstanding online advertising company do? The news story asserts:
The watchdog added that Google failed to provide a technical opt-out solution for publishers, obstructing their ability to “negotiate remuneration.”
The result? Another fine.
Google has had an interesting relationship with France. The country was the scene of the outstanding presentation of the Sundar and Prabhakar demonstration of the quantumly supreme Bard smart software. Google has written checks to France in the past. Now it is associated with flubbing what are relatively straightforward for France requirements to work with publishers.
Not surprisingly, the outfit based in far off California allegedly said, according to the cited news story:
Google criticized a “lack of clear regulatory guidance,” calling for greater clarity in the future from France’s regulatory bodies. The fine is linked to a copyright case that began in 2020, when the French Authority found Google to be acting in violation of France’s copyright and related rights law of 2019.
My experience with France, French laws, and the ins and outs of working with French organizations is limited. Nevertheless, my son — who attended university in France — told me an anecdote which illustrates how French laws work. Here’s the tale which I assume is accurate. He is a reliable sort.
A young man was in the immigration office in Paris. He and his wife were trying to clarify a question related to her being a French citizen. The bureaucrat had not accepted her birth certificate from a municipal French government, assorted documents from her schooling from pre-school to university, and the oddments of electric bills, rental receipts, and medical records. The husband who was an American told me son, “This office does not think my wife is French. She is. And I think we have it nailed this time. My wife has a photograph of General De Gaulle awarding her father a medal.” My son told me, “Dad, it did not work. The husband and wife had to refile the paperwork to correct an error made on the original form.”
My takeaway from this anecdote is that Google may want to stay within the bright white lines in France. Getting entangled in the legacy of Napoleon’s red tape can be an expensive, frustrating experience. Perhaps the Google will learn? On the other hand, maybe not.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2023
Just One Big Google Zircon Gemstone for March 5, 2024
March 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have a folder stuffed with Google gems for the week of February 26 to March 1, 12023. I have a write up capturing more Australians stranded by following Google Maps’s representation of a territory, Google’s getting tangled in another publisher lawsuit, Google figuring out how to deliver better search even when the user’s network connection sucks, Google’s firing 43 unionized contractors while in the midst of a legal action, and more.
The brilliant and very nice wizard adds, “Yes, we have created a thing which looks valuable, but it is laboratory-generated. And it is gem and a deeply flawed one, not something we can use to sell advertising yet”. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Good enough and I liked the unasked for ethnic nuance.
But there is just one story: Google nuked billions in market value and created the meme of the week by making many images the heart and soul of diversity. Pundits wanted one half of the Sundar and Prabhakar comedy show yanked off the stage. Check out Stratechery’s view of Google management’s grasp of leading the company in a positive manner in Gemini and Google’s Culture. The screw up was so bad that even the world’s favorite expert in aircraft refurbishment and modern gas-filled airships spoke up. (Yep, that’s the estimable Sergey Brin!)
In the aftermath of a brilliant PR move, CNBC ran a story yesterday that summed up the February 26 to March 1 Google experience. The title was “Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Says in Rare Public Appearance That Company ‘Definitely Messed Up’ Gemini Image Launch.” What an incisive comment from one of the father of “clever” methods of determining relevance. The article includes this brilliant analysis:
He also commented on the flawed launch last month of Google’s image generator, which the company pulled after users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses. “We definitely messed up on the image generation,” Brin said on Saturday. “I think it was mostly due to just not thorough testing. It definitely, for good reasons, upset a lot of people.”
That’s the Google “gem.” Amazing.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2024
Second Winds: Maybe There Are Other Factors Like AI?
February 28, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb humanoid. No smart software required.
I read “Second Winds,” which is an essay about YouTube. The main idea is that YouTube “content creators” are quitting, hanging up their Sony and Canon cameras, parking their converted vans, and finding an apartment, a job, or their parents’ basement. The reasons are, as the essay points out, not too hard to understand:
- Creating “content” for a long time and having a desire to do something different like not spending hours creating videos, explaining to mom what their “job” is, or living in a weird world without the support staff, steady income, and recognition that other work sometimes provides.
- Burnout because doing video is hard, tedious, and a general contributor to one’s developing a potato-like body type
- Running out of ideas (this is the hook to the Czech playwright unknown to most high school students in the US today I surmise).
I think there is another reason. I have minimal evidence; specifically, the videos of Thomas Gast, a person who ended up in the French Foreign Legion and turned to YouTube. His early videos were explanations about what the French Foreign Legion was, how to enlist, and how to learn useful skills in an austere, male-oriented military outfit. Then he made shooting videos with some of his pals. These morphed into “roughing it” videos in Scandinavia. The current videos include the survival angle and assorted military-themed topics as M.O.S. or Military-Outdoor-Survival. Some of the videos are in German (Gast’s native language); others are in English. It is clear that he knows his subject. However, he is not producing what I would call consistent content. The format is Mr. Gast talking. He sells merchandise. He hints that he does some odd jobs. He writes books. But the videos are beginning to repeat. For lovers of things associated with brave and motivated people, his work is interesting.
For me, he seems to be getting tired. He changes the name under which his videos appear. He is looking for an anchor in the YouTube rapids.
He is a pre-quitter. Let my hypothesize why:
- Making videos takes indoor time. For a person who likes being “outdoors,” the thrill of making videos recedes over time.
- YouTube changes the rules, usually without warning. As a result, Mr. Gast avoids certain “obvious” subjects directly germane to a military professional’s core interests.
- YouTube money is tricky to stabilize. A very few superstars emerge. Most “creators” cannot balance YouTube with their bank account.
Can YouTube change this? No. Why should it? Google needs revenue. Videos which draw eyeballs make Google money. So far the method works. Googlers just need to jam more ads into popular videos and do little to boost niche “creators.” How many people care about the French Foreign Legion? How many care about Mr. Beast? The delta between Mr. Gast and Mr. Beast illustrates Google’s approach. Get lots of clicks; get Google bucks.
Is there a risk to YouTube in the quitting trend, which seems to be coalescing into a trend? Yep, my research team and I have identified several factors. Let’s look at several (not our complete list) quickly:
- Alternative channels with fewer YouTube-type hidden rules. One can push out videos via end to end encrypted messaging platforms like Telegram. Believe us, the use of E2EE is a definite thing, and it is appealing to millions.
- The China-linked TikTok and its US “me too” services like Meta’s allow quick-and-dirty (often literally) videos. Experimentation is easy and lighter weight than YouTube’s method. Mr. Gast should do 30 second videos about weapons or specific French Foreign Legion tasks like avoiding an attack dog hunting one in a forest.
- New technology is attracting the attention of “creators” and may offer an alternative to the DIY demands of making videos the old-fashioned way. Once “creators” figure out AI, there may be a video Renaissance, but it may shift the center of gravity from Google’s YouTube to a different service. Maybe Telegram will emerge as the winner? Maybe Google or Meta will be the winner? Some type of change is guaranteed.
The “second winds” angle is okay. There may be more afoot.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2024
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