Griffin on Tech: Youtube at 20, Apple’s AI woes and the Māori spectrum story
InternetNZ’s latest snapshot of Kiwis’ internet usage suggests at least half of us spend a good four hours a day on the internet mainly on social media platforms, sending emails, and streaming videos and music.
YouTube, which turned 20 this week, combines two of those uses, social media and streaming to particularly good effect. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that of all the platforms that emerged in the Web 2.0 era, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitch and Twitter among them, YouTube is the most useful and least insidious.
Founded by three former PayPal employees, YouTube started out in 2005 as a platform where you could upload self-made videos. Thanks to a handful of videos that went viral, including the famous Charlie bit my finger! Clip, YouTube gained early attraction and the attention of Google, which bought the company in 2006 for US$1.65 billion.
It turned out to be an incredibly good investment. Bloomberg estimates YouTube’s value today at US$455 billion and the platform generates as much gross revenue as Netflix. The difference is that Netflix pays billions each year to produce TV shows and movies. YouTube doesn’t, instead hosting creators’ content and splitting the advertising revenue with them. It’s an ingenious business model that ran into trouble early on when people started flouting copyright law, uploading other people’s content and hoping to reap the ad revenue.
One of YouTube’s biggest innovations was sorting out that mess with the Content ID and takedown system, where copyright owners could either request their content being shared without authorisation to be taken down, or allow it to stay in place but claim the advertising revenue generated.
I spend more time watching YouTube content than free-to-air TV or premium streaming services combined. It’s an incredible educational and entertainment resource with the largest collection of videos in the world. It’s allowed millions of creators to find an audience and some of them have built media empires in the process. Mr Beast, whose content I personally can’t stand, generated around US$85 million from his YouTube activities last year. But YouTube is unwatchable without paying for the premium version which strips out the incessant adverts.
I also like that YouTube has social media elements - an active comment section and live comment functions for live-streamed videos, but that’s not the focus. It’s all about video and YouTube does it better than anyone. That’s not to say there haven’t been missteps. YouTube has let itself down by allowing misinformation to spread, falling into the Big Tech trap of caring too little about policing its own platform. But by and large, it is a force for good.
Māori-led 5G efforts
Speaking of forces for good, I sat down this week with Antony Royal, the CEO of Tū Ātea, to find out what the organisation is doing with the 5G radio spectrum resources it acquired through an arrangement with the Government formalised in 2022.
Royal played an integral role in getting Māori rights to radio spectrum recognised and with an extensive career in tech-related roles and governance, he’s well-placed to put the spectrum to good use for Māori.
Tū Ātea has signed a deal with Wellington’s CentrePort to build the country’s first commercial private 5G network across the port facilities allowing easier communication on a challenging site for wireless signals.
The acquisition of telecoms and broadcasting provider Broadtech also gives it critical mass and a pathway for more Maori into telecoms and tech-related roles. Check out my Business of Tech podcast with Antony Royal which recaps the decades-long quest to get the historic spectrum deal over the line.
Too much, too soon
Finally, we need to talk about Apple. It was respectably late to clamber onto the AI bandwagon, went all in on it last year with the unveiling of Apple Intelligence, and is now grappling with undercooked features and delays to the release of its AI-driven Siri features.
Here was the company that many thought could make AI simple and actually useful, with a track record of making raving fans out of its customers. But Apple underestimated what is involved in building AI products.
It underinvested in AI development, was over-ambitious in its timeline to ship products and it now could be 2026 before it can deliver all of the features it was advertising last year. What’s the lesson?
Beware AI hype. If a tech giant lauded for its ability to executive can stumble on AI, your business can too.
