YouTube is not a natural monopoly, as evidenced by the fact that there are other video hosting services (e.g. Vimeo, Facebook, PeerTube). The network effect is real, to be sure, but it isn't absolute, and anyone can start a competing service which is immediately accessible to every Internet user(†). It's not cheap or easy, of course, especially at YouTube's scale, but YouTube has to overcome the same issues. That's just called being good at what they do.
†) Other than those blocked by the Great Firewall of China, of course—or other national firewalls—but then are they really Internet users when large portions of the Internet are inaccessible to them due to government censorship?
> YouTube is not a natural monopoly, as evidenced by the fact that there are other video hosting services (e.g. Vimeo, Facebook, PeerTube).
Tesla sells solar roofs and power walls accessible to every person in US. Is it an evidence electrical grid is not a natural monopoly? No it is not.
Wikipedia defines natural monopoly as following:
> an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors
The network effect does give Google that overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.
Let’s not forget Google themselves tried to create such a competitor in 2005, the service was called “Google Video”. They tried to compete for a year or so, failed despite they had way more money, then bought the complete YouTube.
I'll add, though, that the part of Google / YouTube / Alphabet that people continually forget in these discussions is the monopoly of the advertising space.
Infrastrucutre, contracts, metrics, standards, etc., all benefit Google (and Facebook) strongly. Together they claim over half of all online advertising.
> Tesla sells solar roofs and power walls accessible to every person in US. Is it an evidence electrical grid is not a natural monopoly? No it is not.
Unlike competing video hosting platforms, solar roofs and PowerWalls are not the same product as the electrical grid. There is some substitution effect, but they generally work in tandem. Most solar and PowerWall-equipped homes are not fully off-grid; it can be done but it takes a lot of storage to ensure you never run out of power with normal household use. (My 5.12 kWh of solar panels generally result in a net surplus of energy each month, but even so I've calculated based on daily net consumption over the last ~16 months that 100 kWh of storage—7-8 PowerWall 2s–would still leave the system depleted by the end of the day 13% of the time. Granted, that includes a three-week span last February where the panels weren't generating much of anything due to snow cover, but that wasn't the only occasion where it would have run out.)
The "natural monopoly" of the electrical grid, for those who believe in such things, lies in access to the physical right-of-way for laying cables to everyone's houses. I'm not sure I'd call this a natural monopoly as the difficulty newcomers face in accessing the right of way (or depending on how you look at it, the ease with which the incumbents claimed the right-of-way for themselves, often through eminent domain) is mostly artificial. Regardless, while it is a true barrier to entry favoring incumbents over the competition, nothing of this nature applies to either Tesla's solar + storage business or to YouTube.
> The network effect does give Google that overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.
The network effect is certainly an advantage while it lasts, but networks are highly mutable, to the point that I wouldn't call this a barrier to entry. For example MySpace had major network effects once as the dominant social network—right up until it was completely replaced by Facebook. Crowds can be fickle like that. There isn't even a social network effect for YouTube like there is with Facebook, where you're strongly incentivized to stick with the same system your friends are using. If you upload your videos somewhere else—as many people do—everyone will still be able to see them.
Of course that doesn't guarantee that any particular experiment in competition will succeed. As you say, Google Video failed to gain traction, and it was hardly the only one. But even so, YouTube has competitors. The failure of Google Video does not imply that YouTube's position in the market is inviolable. They retain their place only so long as they continue to provide the best service.
As you correctly pointed out, the natural monopoly of electrical grid is the network of the cables which connect large pool of producers to even larger pool of consumers. There’re many ways to generate electricity, but if one wants reliable power for reasonable price, the best way by far is connecting to the grid.
Similarly, the natural monopoly of youtube is the social network of people, which connects content creators and viewers. Now in 2022 it’s relatively easy to host videos even at scale, but if a content creator wants access to the global audience, or a viewer wants to watch videos, the best way by far is YouTube.
> networks are highly mutable
Facebook did not win as a result of services competing for users. Few people actually switched from myspace to Facebook. The way Facebook won, it managed to grow faster.
Facebook has 3B monthly active users. We have 8B people living on the planet, 5B of them are already using internet. In 2009 when Facebook overtook Myspace, only 1.8B people were using the internet. Facebook and youtube simply managed to capture the majority of these new 3.2B internet users, and that growth is what made these social networks so mutable in the past. This won’t happen again, not enough people on the planet.
>If you upload your videos somewhere else—as many people do—everyone will still be able to see them.
But people would not be able to find those videos that are uploaded to the competing service/s because Google controls 90% of the internet search and on top of that YouTube is the second most popular search engine on the web after Google itself.
