This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I've never seen a company SO devoted to get me to not use their service. $2-$3 a month is worth not seeing ads in my mind. They've made their website SO user hostile and their prices are just too damned high to justify paying them - I can just go without.
If I could get Youtube Premium for $2-3, I'd probably pay. I don't use it enough to justify spending $10 or whatever it is these days, so I block ads. If that stops working, I'll stop watching Youtube.
I would even pay the 11,99€, in fact I did in the past. Youtube's algorithms made me stop.
Spotify for example caters to my preferences. It took a bit to train it, but the weekly selection is spot on with lots of a variety, and they don't try to shove pop music or other mainstream stuff into my face.
YouTube tries to suckme into a shit hole of craziness at every turn. It tries to make people dumber.
Its funny how we cant use VPNs but companies will go to the country with the lowest wages to get workers.
Companies are free to use labor from anywhere, but make sure we can't get their products from anywhere.
I mean no one is stopping you from moving to another country.
Oooo, lies
Makes sense and probably all companies that do regional pricing have a rule for this, Steam explicitly states to not do this as well
You agree that you will not use IP proxying or other methods to disguise the place of your residence, whether to circumvent geographical restrictions on game content, to order or purchase at pricing not applicable to your geography, or for any other purpose. If you do this, Valve may terminate your access to your Account.
Thinking how this affects the people living in those countries is the best solution
Blows my mind that to this day, companies don't realize it's a service issue. Like it's straight up regressed. Adobe and Microsoft used to encourage piracy to help their bottom line. Now you have stupid PMs who realize they can get a good performance review by talking about how much money they'll make/save from doing stuff like this
This really is not a service issue. This is not a privacy issue.
YouTube as a service is ... actually a great service, it pays creators well, it's fast, it has decades of content, and it has tons of features.
It's monetized with ads, you either watch those ads or you pay them. Using a VPN to get a lower price on the subscription is not a service issue, that's abuse of regional pricing, and no company would accept that.
Using a VPN to get a lower price on the subscription is not a service issue, that’s abuse of regional pricing, and no company would accept that.
The internet's most beloved company, Steam, also bans people for abusing the store using VPNs. So as much as I hate Google, i find nothing wrong with this.
You're getting down voted, but you are mostly correct.
I feel like the amount of ads and/or length is a little excess these days, though.
The thing is, Google isn't dumb. They've user tested this strategy and they know it results in higher revenue.
And the enshitification continues...for those that don't pay
I feel like the amount of ads and/or length is a little excess these days, though.
I do agree but their costs have also skyrocketed because the resolution and frame rate of videos has skyrocketed.
Linus Tech Tips did a video about this ... which agree with his conclusions or not, he paints a clear picture about how YouTube is more expensive to run than it used to be https://youtu.be/MDsJJRNXjYI
Google also isn't in the business of "running things at a loss in hopes of future profit" anymore ... so they need YouTube to be profitable. Maybe it's "too profitable", maybe they could cut down on the amount of advertising they use ... but you're absolutely right that they do test this stuff and find the threshold between "annoying but profitable" and "annoying but we're losing users."
More competition is always good ... but Google isn't stopping competition from showing up, just like Valve isn't stopping competition from showing up, they're just providing a better service that creators keep coming back to (because it's ultimately good for those same creators to get their content out there and monetize it).
no company would accept that.
Except for a company that understands going after these people won't benefit them?
Literally read about regional pricing and how important it is. It's incredibly ignorant to be against regional pricing.
The alternative to regional pricing is people just don't have access at all.
that’s abuse of regional pricing
More like regional pricing is an attempt to maximise value extraction from consumers to best exploit their near monopoly. The abuse is by Google, and savvy consumers are working around the abuse, and then getting hit by more abuse from Google.
Regional pricing is done as a way to create differential pricing - all businesses dream of extracting more money from wealthy customers, while still being able to make a profit on less wealthy ones rather than driving them away with high prices. They find various ways to differentiate between wealthy and less wealthy (for example, if you come from a country with a higher average income, if you are using a User-Agent or fingerprint as coming from an expensive phone, and so on), and charge the wealthy more.
However, you can be assured that they are charging the people they've identified as less wealthy (e.g. in a low average income region) more than their marginal cost. Since YouTube is primarily going to be driven by marginal rather than fixed costs (it is very bandwidth and server heavy), and there is no reason to expect users in high-income locations cost YouTube more, it is a safe assumption that the gap between the regional prices is all extra profit.
High profits are a result of lack of competition - in a competitive market, they wouldn't exist.
So all this comes full circle to Google exploiting a non-competitive market.
More like regional pricing is an attempt to maximise value extraction from consumers
And right there I'm done with your comment. Regional pricing is incredibly important, without it everyone pays the US or EU price and there is no service provided period.
However, you can be assured that they are charging the people they’ve identified as less wealthy (e.g. in a low average income region) more than their marginal cost. Since YouTube is primarily going to be driven by marginal rather than fixed costs (it is very bandwidth and server heavy), and there is no reason to expect users in high-income locations cost YouTube more, it is a safe assumption that the gap between the regional prices is all extra profit.
Even if true, that's not what this hoopla is about. It's about someone from say ... the US using a VPN to get Kenyan pricing. As another person said "The internet’s most beloved company, Steam, also bans people for abusing the store using VPNs."
Regional pricing is the only reason people in these countries even stand a chance at access to the service (because ultimately their costs might be a bit lower in these countries but not by much ... I would not be surprised if regional pricing is pretty much just above the break even mark). People in other countries abusing those slashed prices threatens the whole system.
This is people in "first world" countries trying to rig the system: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/15hz5ys/found_country_that_works_to_get_youtube_premium/
Someone in Uzbekistan for instance would feel as the average US consumer would if a year of YouTube premium was $829.
The only thing VPN's are good for anymore is hiding torrents. That's it.
Somebody should invent a way to use them for serious things, like connecting to your company’s intranet or something
If you pay for YouTube premium, you're a clown and you're only fueling the enshittification.
Ads are bad (I agree).
Paying for things is bad.
Then what's left? YouTube should somehow be ad free and free of cost for the user forever and ever? Who's gonna pay for the enormous costs of operating the service?
People are going to start yelling at me about capitalism and enshitiffication. Both of which cause problems, but what do you propose here? Magic?
I propose YouTube make a MUCH better premium product and price it correctly. Paying for things is fine. Paying for things to get crappier? Na
How is YouTube getting crappier for me as a paying customer? I feel like it hasn't really changed in years.
Glad you enjoy it. Keep doing your thing. But are you seriously deaf to the rising chorus of complaints about YouTube? This thread contains many examples of youtube's enshitification over the few couple years. Your question feels disingenuous at best to me
Name one complaint, other than blocking people with ad blockers. How has the actual product changed?
I'm not opposed to paying for online services in general, I'm just not going to pay them to make the site worse with every update. (Plus I kinda categorically refuse to give Google money at this point.)
If you watch ads instead of paying a modest fee to remove them then you're a clown. Companies do need to make money for the services they provide, I just disagree with the amount.
“Modest?” $14 a month? $5 would be modest. I literally pay less for whole as streaming services.
I pay less than 5usd for a family plan, I just subscribed through a developing nation with a VPN.
Which, as the article states, they are starting to end that practice.
That was my comment about the amount that should be charged. I'll happily pay $5/mo, but not $15. I'm happy to pay for services, just not the amount that many want to charge.
