Dailymotion, Odyssee, Vimeo, Twitch, AngelThump, BitChute, Archive.org, and more exist and have varying levels of adoption. YouTube could be replaced by any of them, if users wanted to avoid DoubleClick, and video makers were willing to decentralize.
I disagree. Replacing YouTube is a colossal undertaking. YouTube only made it as far as they did because Google was willing to lose tons and tons of money on it for years before it ever actually became profitable for them. Very few companies can afford to take that kind of long-term loss, even if it does guarantee longer-term success. Just look at how long it takes DailyMotion or Vimeo videos to start playing when you load them; that buffer time is indicative of exactly why they'll never overtake YouTube. Even just a couple seconds of buffer shows how much stronger Google's massive CDN network is, which is the backbone of the platform.
I understand where you're coming from, but the point for me is that these video hosts already exist - this isn't just theoretical. The sites are there, buffer time or not. People could easily start using them more, it's only momentum that keeps it where it is. YouTube caught on because DoubleClick has consistently ranked their own video services higher than ones on other sites. I think that's probably something that needs to be addressed - if the Google search page for Video was relabeled YouTube, and a second video tab was created that showed video only on non-DoubleClick owned sites, that would be minimally acceptable. I'd also like to see Bing and other engines using its results being better at showing non-YouTube content.
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