It's a shame that a lot of the antitrust criticisms of google don't focus on Youtube. The fact that youtube is one of the main rivals to wikipedia in results is highly suspicious to me, and should be to antitrust regulators.
Of course at this point its a bit of a self reinforcing cycle, because youtube ranks, it gets more and more content, becomes more popular, and so google might be ranking it more and more legitimately.
But I find it impossible to believe that youtube would have done as well and would be doing as well in SERPS if it wasn't a google property. They've clearly built another site and brand with their own monopoly, similar to internet explorer by microsoft.
The main rivals to YT are sites like Vimeo and Twitch, not Wikipedia. And I don't think either of those is anywhere near YT-scale. It's really hard to run that kind of service in a profitable way, and even harder to let creators monetize their content directly the way YT does.
Yes, but in SERPs I think the main rivals to YT are independent blogs and content sites. Search for "how-to" type queries on Google, and it will often return videos from its own property (YouTube) ranked above text-based content. Google would prefer you to stay within its ecosystem. This is anticompetitive.
How is YouTube not a competitor to Wikipedia? Both are community powered content. They would be directly competing on many major search terms. The fact that the editorial standards and media formats are different is beside the point.
Of course at this point its a bit of a self reinforcing cycle, because youtube ranks, it gets more and more content, becomes more popular, and so google might be ranking it more and more legitimately.
But I find it impossible to believe that youtube would have done as well and would be doing as well in SERPS if it wasn't a google property. They've clearly built another site and brand with their own monopoly, similar to internet explorer by microsoft.
It would be such an easy target to go after imo.