LogFAQs > #976662299

TheMikh posted...

i abhor advertising, but you absolutely positively need either some source of revenue, subsidization, or deep pockets to operate the infrastructure required to power web services at scale. servers run on energy which costs money, and their maintenance requires labor which costs money. it's basic economics.

the reason why so many web 2.0 services operated for free for so long was because they were subsidizing their operations with venture capital funding. in youtube's case, it was long subsidized by google. some web services sold customer data. i would be completely unsurprised if these companies also thrived on the subzero interest rate regime that ended this past year, which allowed for companies to operate with large amounts of debt and other financial shenanigans.

but i typed this all out before finishing reading the thread, so some of this has already been articulated in some way or another.

They make shittons of money collecting and selling your data. That alone is more than enough to run YouTube, and its not even counting what they make from YouTube Premium, ads from the people who arent tech savvy enough to block them, and all the other things that make Google a trillion dollar company.