# Lessons from YouTube

- **Episode:** [162](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/162.md) (2025-01-14)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** youtube, lessons, tech
- **Time:** 37:15–39:06 (start 2235s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/162?t=2235](https://truthliesandwork.com/162?t=2235)

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[37:15] Bruce Daisley: Yeah, it's a long time since I worked there, but I think, you know, the interesting thing I would say about YouTube is that it's, in the whole time it's existed really, it's never stepped up and owned the innovator position that it should have done. You know, we knew— I worked at YouTube for a long time, almost 4 years, very, very happy there. And, um, and, you know, initially YouTube was like the home of video, great. But when streaming video came along, oh yeah, it wasn't the home of that. Twitch came along and took its mantle. Then, uh, TikTok came along. 2 innovations at the heart of TikTok, really. Um, the algorithm, which showed you really exciting new content, but also the camera, the capacity to create new content on the fly. And, you know, until then, YouTube was almost 15, 20 years old and had never created anything that allowed people to edit videos. Incredible, you know. And now they have, they've got something which just illustrates that the absence of competition has made the business quite slow. And, you know, So I would say it missed TikTok, it missed Twitch, it missed all manner of different innovations in its backyard really. And it's just a demonstration that I don't think it's innovated quite quick enough. It's, you know, like a lot of businesses, it's a bureaucracy, it moves very slowly. And so, you know, I personally think the best thing that could happen to both Google and YouTube is if they're broken up. out. Having separate companies is generally good for competition. It's generally good for us, good for stockholders if that bothers you, you know. But yeah, it's sort of better for everyone when these companies have a bit more competition against each other