YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill
<!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>YouTube’s Bandwidth Bill Is Zero. Welcome to the New Net</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
<!--sizeo:2--><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->By Ryan Singel Email Author October 16, 2009<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
YouTube may pay less to be online than you do, a new report on internet connectivity suggests, calling into question a recent analysis arguing Google’s popular video service is bleeding money and demonstrating how the internet has continued to morph to fit user’s behavior.
In fact, with YouTube’s help, Google is now responsible for at least 6 percent of the internet’s traffic, and likely more — and may not be paying an ISP at all to serve up all that content and attached ads.
Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was binging on bandwidth, losing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streams 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that Google’s traffic is approaching 10 percent of the net’s traffic, and that it’s got so much fiber optic cable, it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net’s largest ISPs.
“I think Google’s transit costs are close to zero,†said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net’s ISPs, likely knows more about the net’s ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency.
And the extraordinary fact that a website serving nearly 100 billion videos a year has no bandwidth bill means the net isn’t the network it used to be.
<a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/youtube-bandwidth/" target="_blank">Full Article</a>
<!--sizeo:2--><span style="font-size:10pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->By Ryan Singel Email Author October 16, 2009<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->
YouTube may pay less to be online than you do, a new report on internet connectivity suggests, calling into question a recent analysis arguing Google’s popular video service is bleeding money and demonstrating how the internet has continued to morph to fit user’s behavior.
In fact, with YouTube’s help, Google is now responsible for at least 6 percent of the internet’s traffic, and likely more — and may not be paying an ISP at all to serve up all that content and attached ads.
Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was binging on bandwidth, losing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streams 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that Google’s traffic is approaching 10 percent of the net’s traffic, and that it’s got so much fiber optic cable, it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net’s largest ISPs.
“I think Google’s transit costs are close to zero,†said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net’s ISPs, likely knows more about the net’s ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency.
And the extraordinary fact that a website serving nearly 100 billion videos a year has no bandwidth bill means the net isn’t the network it used to be.
<a href="http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/youtube-bandwidth/" target="_blank">Full Article</a>
Comments
P.S. Alas.
That is a <b>terrible</b> analogy.
I always found "expert's" claims of Google's irrational purchase of youtube to be suspect. Buying something hemorrhaging money as they claimed didn't seem like a very good business deal.
--Scythe--
It's valid, smart, sensible and useful trade. Let me put it in to a point of practice which won't get me something stupid like the above in a reply,
Fred is a Potato farmer. John is a crop farmer.
Fred's stock is selling well and John's is not. John has too much crop which goes to waste, so John leases* some land to Fred and in return he gets some profit from Fred's potato selling and does not have to bill John for his land use.
Done.
<img src="http://i.somethingawful.com/forumsystem/emoticons/emot-colbert.gif" border="0" class="linked-image" />
In other news...
<b>OMGZ YOUTUBE PAYS LESS THAN ME!?!?1/ ANGRY RIOT!</b>
homosexual! /signed