America's No. 1 financial conglomerate

Chapter 486 YouTube?

When Ernst received the call from Massim, Affil and others were with him.

"The other party is clearly shirking its responsibilities, wanting to reap the benefits of the platform's traffic without putting in any effort."

Ernst's lips curled into a faint smile, and he let out a slightly mocking chuckle, a hint of displeasure flashing in his eyes. "Of course."

He knew all too well what these capitalists were up to.

They would never be willing to pay a single penny if given the chance to get something for free, even if those costs were necessary to maintain normal operations.

If calling someone "Dad" earns a penny, many Chinese people might have some backbone, but in America, those who call him "Dad" the most enthusiastic are definitely the wealthy who have no worries about food and clothing.

In their eyes, interests always come first; so-called dignity and bottom lines are utterly worthless in the face of interests.

"So how do you plan to handle this?" Affil asked.

Ernst suddenly revealed a meaningful, wicked smile and slowly uttered three words: "No action."

"Not going to do anything?" Afei's face was filled with shock. He never expected to receive such an answer. "If we sit idly by and do nothing, Wawa stores will definitely escalate their behavior. Other partner stores may follow suit and imitate this practice in order to maximize their own profits."

For these products that are nearing their expiration date, stores usually choose to offer discounts or sell them in bulk at low prices to stores that specialize in selling discounted products nearing their expiration date, thereby reducing losses from inventory backlog.

But now these stores may be shifting all the risks and costs to the platform, which is absolutely unacceptable.

Never try to test a capitalist's conscience with money; that's a false proposition. They will only keep crossing the line when driven by profit.

Afeier was certain that if other stores saw that Wawa was alright, they would follow suit.

"If we let them continue like this, it will ultimately be our flash sale platform that suffers. Consumers will become dissatisfied with the platform because they buy products that are close to their expiration date and do not receive a reasonable solution. Our reputation will face a huge challenge, and it may even lead to the loss of users, which will affect the long-term development of the platform."

Ernst's smile gradually faded, but his eyes remained calm. He knew, of course, what the consequences would be if left unchecked, but now was not the time to deal with the matter. "Let the bullets fly for a while."

Seeing the absolute confidence in his tone, as if he had everything under control, Afei didn't say anything more.

After spending a day at Flashbuy's headquarters and finding no new problems, Ernst went to Google's headquarters the next day.

In the Google Video office building, Google Video's Chief Technology Officer stood in front of a computer, demonstrating the finalized version of the Google Video website to Ernst and other Google executives.

This project, which has lasted for more than a year, almost two years, is finally ready for official commercialization.

Google Video had actually released a trial version a long time ago, but Ernst was never satisfied with it during the trial.

The reason is simple: it doesn't meet his requirements.

If a video still experiences buffering issues on an online streaming website, even with a high-performance computer and high-speed network provided by Google, then the experience for ordinary users in daily use is even more unpleasant.

User experience is crucial for a product's market success, and he absolutely cannot allow Google Video to be released to the market in an imperfect state.

Therefore, over the past year, the Google Video R&D team has continuously invested energy in technical modifications and improvements, overcoming technical challenges time and time again, and finally delivered a satisfactory result to Ernst today.

Seeing the satisfaction on Ernst's face, Ruhr also showed a proud expression. "We tested the video playback more than two thousand times, and in these tests, the probability of stuttering was only 0.2%, which is almost negligible."

"Moreover, this mere 0.2% lag does not prove that the problem is caused by our technology; it could also be due to the computer's hardware and software."

Ernst's eyes never left the computer screen, where the second movie had already started playing. The picture remained as smooth as ever, without any lag.

He asked Ruhr curiously, "How did you solve the packet loss problem that had been bothering us for so long?"

The reason why Google Video has been experiencing buffering issues is ultimately due to packet loss during data transmission.

Currently, the retransmission mechanisms of existing data transmission protocols in the industry are all calculated based on the TCP protocol. During the back-and-forth transmission of data, data retransmission scheduling is based on an exponential backoff mechanism with round-trip time.

In practical applications, this mechanism can easily lead to packet loss during data transmission. Once packet loss occurs, subsequent data supply will be insufficient, resulting in video playback stuttering.

This is similar to counting numbers in sequence. Normally, you would count 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on without interruption. However, during data transmission, if the number 2 suddenly fails to arrive, then even if the number 3 is ready, you have to wait for the retransmission of number 2 before you can continue counting to 3.

This manifests in video playback as stuttering or buffering.

When Ruhr heard Ernst's question, he answered frankly, "We haven't completely solved the packet loss problem at all."

Seeing Ernst's gaze shift from the computer screen to him, he explained, "We've been stuck in a misconception, fixated on how to reduce packet loss. We've tried various methods, but the results haven't been ideal."

"Later we realized that it wasn't necessary at all. We could have focused on optimizing the recovery speed after packet loss. It's like driving in the snow. Instead of carefully avoiding the slippery snow and driving slowly and laboriously, we could just switch to anti-skid tires and solve the problem in a different way."

Ernst roughly understood that while 1 was still playing, 2 had already quickly connected and finished uploading.

As long as the re-upload speed after packet loss can be improved, and the data is replenished before the previous number finishes playing, then packet loss is irrelevant.

Ruhr added, "However, while we haven't completely solved the packet loss problem, we have made a series of improvements to the data transmission mechanism. Google Video Streaming has adopted a more aggressive retransmission strategy. We modified the original RTT estimation model to a sliding window model. Through the optimization of this model, we can more accurately predict the round-trip time of data transmission and dynamically adjust the retransmission strategy, further improving the efficiency and stability of data transmission."

Ruhr then went on to explain in detail, but Ernst didn't understand a word of it.

So I directly interrupted them, asking, "So, Google Video can be launched anytime?"

"That's right." Ruhr puffed out his chest, looking like a fighting rooster.

After browsing through Google's technical department, he was about to leave when Ruhr suddenly called him back.

Ernst looked at him suspiciously and asked, "Is there anything else?"

Ruhr said seriously, "There's a website that I think we could consider acquiring."

Ernst became interested; a website that Ruhr felt should be acquired must have considerable value.

"What website?"

Ruhr replied, "ShareYourWorld.com, I know the founder of this website, his name is Ches Norlin."

Noticing that Ernst's expression suddenly became somewhat strange, he worried that Ernst might misunderstand and think that he was recommending the acquisition of the website because of personal connections. He quickly explained, "Don't misunderstand. The reason I want to suggest acquiring this website is not because I know Ches Norlin, but because their website is indeed very unique and can complement our Google Video business very well."

"This is also a video website, founded last year and officially launched this year. However, unlike Google Video, which is dedicated to providing online movie streaming services, this is a video sharing website that allows users to watch and share videos in various formats, including both short and long videos."

Ernst's strange expression wasn't because the website was related to Ruhr and he suspected Ernst of abusing his power for personal gain, but because he had heard of the website.

ShareYourWorld.com is widely recognized as the earliest video sharing website, and can be considered the prototype and ancestor of YouTube and other mainstream video platforms that followed.

Unfortunately, it was born at the wrong time. Due to the current internet development environment, network bandwidth is generally low, and users are prone to encountering problems such as buffering and slow loading when watching videos.

Another issue is that the website itself is not technically sound, having been hastily developed and launched, which is the practice of most internet startups today.

The result is that the number of users online at the same time increases only slightly, and the server will fail. Ultimately, it's a shoddy operation with inadequate technology and a flawed architecture.

All these factors combined ultimately led to the website having to cease operations a few years later due to depleted operating budgets and excessively high bandwidth costs, becoming a regrettable case in the history of internet development.

ShareYourWorld.com is not the only company experimenting with internet video services; many others, such as Ring Warriors, are also involved.

This is a website developed and launched by World Wrestling Superstars in collaboration with software company VDO and internet service provider Webstar. It focuses on the online video dissemination of wrestling events.

However, the website only produced six episodes before it was forced to shut down due to the immaturity of internet streaming technology.

However, the immaturity of the technology does not mean that it cannot be acquired and integrated into Google Video for gradual development.

With Google's financial investment and technological strength, YouTube might be launched in two years.

"It's your decision. If this website is really worth acquiring, then let's buy it."