You're obviously right. But it's funny to me; I find it easy to imagine a world where staying independent and hosting your own stuff was seen as cooler. Instead of YouTube and Google Buzz, we ran RSS clients akin to Outlook and Thunderbird. They torrent and seed media we're subscribed to while we're at work or class. It's saved on a home server. We walk in and simply toss it up on our desktop or TV. (Or maybe a mobile client streams from your home server over the Internet or over your home Wi-Fi if you're at home )

And if you visited the website instead of YouTube's recommendations, The creator just adds a few RSS feeds on the backend to pull thumbnails from, of other creators' sites they enjoy.

Crazy how easy it is to daydream though, when I'm not the one putting the work in.

There was a world before YouTube. It grew from humble beginnings. Granted it didn't have an incumbent to fight off, but it had all the server issues, bandwidth issues and similar.

The only thing that stops someone else doing it is the user base.

The problem with youtube in particular is there is no way to build an alternative that’s as good as YouTube

as good

I mean, assuming that's exactly what people wan, "exactly youtube but cheaper", then yeah it's an impossible and thankless task to even try something of that scale. Instead it's better to think of building youtube alternatives that are focused on one or two parameters that allow organizational optimizations. For example, much of the issue that people complain about is the storage, but a YT-alt that dedicates to eg.: archivism of old TV shows, that scan at best at 480p or 360p, wouldn't need to spend that much in storage compared to a service that is trying to serve 4K UHD 120fps Subwoofer Surround; that combined with the topical focus suddenly makes it much more scaleable and approachable.

What happened to dailymotion and vimeo?