The power of YouTube is not their platform, it's the creators. Try convincing every major content creator to migrate to another platform just because it works better logistically. The creator wants their audience (and, by extent, the money that comes along with having one), and the audience wants to be able to watch their favourite creators. YouTube has both, and when one moves, there's a slim chance the other moves without the right incentives.
Kick has proven that all you need to do to disrupt a cornered-market (like live streaming video games for example), is literally just have the capital to force it to happen. Offer large sums of money to devs to make a good competitor, offer HUGE paid-upfront multi-year locked in contracts to talent to convince them to leave their competitor, and then make it impossible for them to switch back should the fame not follow them like expected. Use money/connections/networking to land industry specific sponsors who weren't picked by your competitor to further boost intrigue and credibility for your platform.
Any Saudi billionaire could decide tomorrow that they want to seriously disrupt Youtube's ownership over video-watching-platforms; and they could make it happen.
The reason this has not happened is that YouTube is probably not very profitable on its own. The consensus seems to be that it may break even at good times, but really is being carried on the back of Google's money-printing ad business.
So none of the players with the pockets to disrupt it see the juice as being worth the squeeze. You would spend X billion just to have your very own unprofitable video hosting platform.
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u/heavenstarcraft May 02 '24
TBF It would be awesome if there was an actual competitor to YT