Hello,
for approx. last 14 days we're seeing problems with video playing from
youtube (page loads without problems, but player shows error), and also
other applications like maps are having problems. As these problems were
only for some of prefixes announced out of AS 8251, we recognised that
as problem with Google's CDN and reported it to Google. As workaround,
filtering affected prefixes from peering in Prague partially helped.
We already tried communicate problem with Google from the beginning (in
our network, around 50000 end users are directly afected), and they're
claiming, that problem is related only to our network and there's no
global issue. But similar issues we're seeing from some other networks,
which are peering with Google and have nothing common with our AS8251.
We sent emails to Google NOC/NST, also tried to phone them about the
problems, but according to end-user claims, problem persist. Problem is
isolated only to peak hours, when something seems to be saturated.
If I recall past optional IPv6 from Google, they said: "It is very
important to us that our users always receive the best possible
experience". But majority of end users still uses IPv4 and we're seeing
problems here - and response is minimal. At least information about
cause of the problem and expected time for problem resolution.
Is anyone else seeing similar problems with Google/Youtube?
Certain Finnish domestic SPs had issues with youtube during peak hours for
years, when content came via Stockholm, if content came from mainland
europe or locally you were set.
Perhaps Google was (maybe still is) regularly congested in Stockholm, and
there might not be much incentive for google to add capacity everywhere
sufficiently, as they can just pressure to people to host them for free.
I'm bit curious about market position youtube has. GOOG claims youtube is
making profit, but I think this is because network is considered other BUs
cost and youtube rides on it for free (remember pre-youtube, how GOOG
micro-optimized google front-page to save on network cost, post-youtube
they rightly stopped caring and added predictive input etc.)
I can't see how anyone could compete against youtube, I don't believe the
service is anywhere near profitable (it's maybe 10% of Internet, and I
can't see revenue being 10% of Internet), if it would have to pay for the
network itself. Consequently you probably can't compete with them, as you
need to cover the costs from the profits. It is just so ubiquitous service,
that if it does not work your eyeballs will switch to network where it
does, so you will give google free capacity, which you wouldn't probably do
for others web streaming shops.
Is anyone else seeing similar problems with Google/Youtube?
My advice is, host the content locally.
Sound advice, IMHO.
I'm bit curious about market position youtube has. GOOG claims youtube is
making profit, but I think this is because network is considered other BUs
cost and youtube rides on it for free (remember pre-youtube, how GOOG
micro-optimized google front-page to save on network cost, post-youtube
they rightly stopped caring and added predictive input etc.)
I do not work for Google, nor have I asked anyone in Google how they do their accounting. However, I would be rather surprised to find the vast majority of their capacity is charged to the BU using a tiny fraction of that capacity, while the BU using the lion's share gets a "free ride".
I can't see how anyone could compete against youtube, I don't believe the
service is anywhere near profitable (it's maybe 10% of Internet, and I
can't see revenue being 10% of Internet), if it would have to pay for the
network itself. Consequently you probably can't compete with them, as you
need to cover the costs from the profits. It is just so ubiquitous service,
that if it does not work your eyeballs will switch to network where it
does, so you will give google free capacity, which you wouldn't probably do
for others web streaming shops.
First, I believe YouTube is > 10% of the Internet.
Second, I see no reason why that requires anything close - not even within a couple orders of magnitude - of 10% of the Internet's revenue to be profitable. Why would you assume such a thing?
Agreed, 10% of Internet's revenue would be exaggeration.
What I'm trying to say, I can't see youtube generating anywhere nearly
enough revenue who shift 10% (or more) of Internet. And to explain this
conundrum to myself, I've speculated accounting magic (which I'd frown
upon) and leveraging market position to get free capacity (which is ok, I'd
do the same, had I the leverage)
In a message written on Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 03:59:22PM +0200, Saku Ytti wrote:
What I'm trying to say, I can't see youtube generating anywhere nearly
enough revenue who shift 10% (or more) of Internet. And to explain this
conundrum to myself, I've speculated accounting magic (which I'd frown
upon) and leveraging market position to get free capacity (which is ok, I'd
do the same, had I the leverage)
I suspect you're thinking about revenue in terms of say, the
advertisements they run with the videos. I beleive you're right, that
would never pay the bills.
Consider a different model. Google checks out your gmail account, and
discovers you really like Red Bull and from your YouTube profile knows
you watch a lot of Ke$ha videos. It also discovers there are a lot more
folks with the same profile. They can now sell that data to a marketing
firm, that there is a strong link between energy drinks and Ke$ha
videos.
GOOG-411 - building a corpus of voice data for Android's voice
recognition.
ReCaptcha - improving visual recognition for their book scanning
process.
Most of the "free" services are simply the cheapest way to get the data
needed for some other service that can make much more money. It may
seem weird to write off all the costs of YouTube as data aquisition
costs, but there's far more money to be made selling marketing data than
ads against streaming videos...
From the latest csco prime presentation it appears it offers similar
functionality in one of the modules that one can buy to it so that providers
can have a sneak peak on these type of data in order to sell them to third
parties
Though I wouldn't even know whom to sell such information
Nor have I been hit by a targeted advertisement, yet
For some providers this might be an interesting revenue stream in these days
where we need to build ever faster backbones to carry more and more video
traffic for users that want to pay less and less for high-speed internet
connectivity
Sure. I have no doubt the main reasons to keep youtube are.
a) data mining
b) contingency
B) is essentially having the most popular platform, in case if video
platform becomes viable marketing platform on itself.
Data mining aspect might make it less dubious to sink network cost to
different BU than to the BU which actually uses the network, as that
network is also benefitting from the data.
WIth my limited understanding of such topics I've long been confused by
something I read a couple of years back - in an Arbor report perhaps - to
the effect that by being the originator of so much traffic, and as they
built out their own network, Google were making money on transit.
In a message written on Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 03:59:22PM +0200, Saku Ytti
wrote:
> What I'm trying to say, I can't see youtube generating anywhere nearly
> enough revenue who shift 10% (or more) of Internet. And to explain this
> conundrum to myself, I've speculated accounting magic (which I'd frown
> upon) and leveraging market position to get free capacity (which is ok,
I'd
> do the same, had I the leverage)
I suspect you're thinking about revenue in terms of say, the
advertisements they run with the videos. I beleive you're right, that
would never pay the bills.
Consider a different model. Google checks out your gmail account, and
discovers you really like Red Bull and from your YouTube profile knows
you watch a lot of Ke$ha videos. It also discovers there are a lot more
folks with the same profile. They can now sell that data to a marketing
firm, that there is a strong link between energy drinks and Ke$ha
videos.
Actually GOOG doesn't allow this as policy. Different BUs are rather quite
restricted on how they can obtain other BUs data. In general "if you can't
do it as XYZ corp, you can't do it from inside of GOOG either" -- there's a
sort of privacy/policy watchdog group inside of the puzzle palace with at
least a few people who are *very* concerned with privacy and data
protection. I know this just because I've met a handful of them over the
years. The ones in the group charged with making sure your data isn't
opened up to everyone and their brother, even inside of google, to this
sort of thing are pretty fanatical too. Ads can't use any data in any
other way than anyone else could from GMail. Same goes with search. They
can (and clearly do) share technology, software, infrastructure, and
methodologies, but, the actual data is a pretty touchy subject between BUs
due to their own policy. Even if they disband the group, everyone I've
ever met with any responsibility towards user data shared the attitude that
doing something many of us would consider "icky" would be somethign they'd
block against internally. (such as just opening up the gmail to any
advertiser that came along, aggregating data between BUs to sell individual
preferences, etc)
Will this be the case forever? Dunno. The ethos/culture is what keeps all
this in check right now and culture is known to change. All that said,
they're quite profitable now, and so I don't know that there's a pressure
from profit motive to improve that revenue stream by doing dirty pool.
Especially if the world governments decide they're playing dirty pool and
go looking.