What started as a trickle of a problem a few months ago has bubbled over into a series of unfortunate, unstoppable, unbearable and unbelievable events in the life of a successful startup that has perhaps become too big for its boots.
Two months ago, I noticed that every fifth or sixth blog I visited that included an embedded YouTube video would display a single white line of text after clicking the play button. “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available”.
This was obviously a pretty big deal. ‘No longer available’ implied that YouTube had deleted the video, possibly because it had violated one of their highly publicised copyright infringement conditions. At the time, I simply ignored the video portion of the castrated blog post and moved swiftly on.
But a few days later, after noticing that the frequency of this message was quickly increasing, and having found a video that I really wanted to see, I clicked the YouTube logo in the corner of the embedded player to get back to the original video post. While waiting for the page to load, I was sifting through the possible reasons for this seemingly non-offensive video being unavailable. When the page appeared, the most extraordinary thing happened. The video started playing. No mention of it being unavailable at all. In fact, the comments underneath the player were as recent as an hour or two before.
This was intriguing. Why would an enormously successful, somewhat spoilt, adopted child of Google’s deliver such conflicting user experiences? I started digging, seeking out blogs or sites with embedded YouTube videos. Surprisingly, 80% of the videos on the sites I found were ‘unavailable’ in the embedded player but perfectly presentable on YouTube’s own site. This wasn’t a needle in a haystack. This was serious. And, after extending the amateur investigation into a week-long snoop, I came to the conclusion that YouTube was trying to force users to visit YouTube.com to view their videos.
A bit of a cheek, I thought, but something that would probably resolve itself as a non-event when the head honchos had received enough complaints to prod them into retracting their vicious plan.
But, as most of the planet now knows, the situation is a lot more serious than my previous investigations had revealed. This problem is no longer limited to embedded videos. It now affects just about any video, in any YouTube session, for any visitor, using any browser. Loading a YouTube video has now become a major chore, requiring at least a few page refreshes (and peer-to-peer help in times of sheer desperation). It has prompted discussions, debates, blog posts and questions acrossthethe web.
Now, while the world happily refreshes YouTube videos in a never ending spree, one of two things is happening here. Either:
YouTube has grown too big and too fast, leaving the thousands of Google employees unable to deal with the traffic by optimizing resources. This is highly, hugely, grossly unlikely. A company that builds hundreds of services, dealing with billions of queries per day, is surely in control of sufficient financial and human capital to knock this problem on the head.
or
YouTube is doing this on purpose. They must be. If not, why would they not simply change the alert from ‘We’re sorry, this video is no longer available’ to ‘We’re sorry, this video is not available right now’? Why mislead users?
This is the interesting bit, because there are two possible answers. Or one answer, if both of them apply.
They’re balancing and rationing their output. A viewer:video ratio of some sort. So at any one second in time, 40% of users will see the ‘no longer available’ alert. As they click refresh, some of them see the video, while those of the previous 60% with access are then blocked when trying to click on the next video.
The conspiracy-theorist-capitalist in me thinks that this smacks a bit of visit manipulation. In other words, the more people who have to visit YouTube.com (because embedded videos only play one out of five times), the more people have to refresh each video page three to ten times, the more views each video racks up. Inflated views = inflated ad impressions = greater monetisation. Et voila, YouTube races towards the profit line.
There are a few alternative browsers that have been known to deliver a more reliable YouTube experience, but for how much longer? And even if this is the case, why is YouTube inconveniencing 95% of the connected population? If you’re embedding videos you’ve uploaded to YouTube, can you really expect your users to go to the trouble of finding the original on YouTube.com and going into a refreshing cycle of note until they finally hit the jackpot?
Already, users are actively seeking out alternatives to YouTube. You would think that this notion alone would frighten the big kahunas in Mountain View enough to do something about the situation.
But if they continue to do nothing, say nothing and fix nothing, you might want to think about why.
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42 Responses to “YouTube says they’re sorry. But are they?”
Thanks for the research. I thought it was just me that had this problem! We even asked our Service Provider if they were blocking YouTube.
I find it hard to believe that Google is displaying this message on purpose in order to drive more traffic. If they are, it’s very dumb wording to use. “This video is no longer available” does not make you reach for the F5 button; it makes you move on.
Agreed completely about the misleading message Andrew. But if they’re NOT doing it on purpose, why not change the message to something friendlier and more descriptive of the problem: “This video is not available right now. Please try again later”?
This problem has grown to ridiculous proportions and yet it remains unresolved. Perhaps this only happens outside of the USA, in which case it’s not all that surprising that we’re being left to our own devices.
I think users can specifically decide whether or not to allow visitors to embed videos. One of the upsides (for a user) of a YouTube visitor actually visiting the video on the site, is that the user’s profile is prominently displayed on the right - whereas embedded videos don’t display anything about the user.
In a blog context, it’s basically like having all your content scraped, with no credit whatsoever to you. That, in essence, is what the Embed widget does. Okay, there’s the exception that if you click on the video, you jump to the YouTube page, but it’s not the same as actually visiting the site to begin with.
Other than that, I don’t think Google’s too worried about load. It might be the ISPs between Google and us - if they reach capacity, maybe they tell Google’s server to deny the video or something. It’s not inconceivable.
Monetization? God knows Google makes more than enough already: $4.2bn NET income in 2007: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=GOOG&annual . I don’t think they’ll go that sleazy just to inflate page impressions.
I was wondering if this was not a regional thing - I would have thought that there would be much more noise on places like Techcrunch and Digg if the US was effected…
@Wogan There is definitely benefit to YT in having users view videos on YouTube.com and, yes, Google has gazillions of dollars but you have to question the motives here when, according to YouTube.com’s Help Center, the only time this message should be displayed is when the following occurs. “You may receive this error message if the video uploader has removed their video, disabled its embed option, or if the video’s been removed for violating our Terms of Use”. This is clearly not the case, as all the videos presenting this message can be viewed five or eight refreshes later, so they were available all along. Why lie to users?
I have a few names on youtube. I was fine watching videos until i left some adverse comments regarding ebay under one of the names I use.. Then I began to be blocked from all videos when using that identity but no videos are blocked under any other names. Is there any link between ebay & youtube. Only after leaving these adverse comments did i suffer this problem..
As far i can find no one has suggested that this could be a reason for an individual being blocked from youtube videos but i am very sceptical about this.
Can ebay or big companies influence youtube & persuade youtube to block access to there site.
In my opinion very probably.!
The problem isn’t just with embedded videos, it even happens on Youtube itself. I tried releasing a sextape the other day and whilst testing it on my user profile, every 3rd or 4th time I got a message saying that the video was currently unavailable.
Good detective work there Andrew! I’ve been producing videos for the past few months and uploading them to both YouTube and MyVideo. I’ve also been embedding these in my blog but always go for the MyVideo code when doing so. It’s basically the South African version of YouTube and is a lot better I find.
If YouTube is trying to be shneaky and attract more traffic to their site they should at least make the poorly phrased “we’re sorry” line a link to the user’s video channel and profile. That would be a more win-win scenario. Does the same happen with all the YouTube videos embedded in Facebook for that matter? Haven’t checked…
Otherwise you would think that the massive YouTube logo that’s displayed on the bottom-right of every YouTube video is enough advertising!
I’ve been getting this for quite a while now, and it’s goes to show that youtube have lost the plot completely. Every single video I’ve tried to watch comes up with the “No longer available” message.
Nobody wants a lovely wrapped gift when the gift is a box full of emptyness. The internet is serious business after all.
@Inspector Gadget: My name’s Jason, but thanks anyway I know that you’ve also been uploading quite a bit of media to Zoopy, which I obviously think is a very smart move!
@Joachim: I wonder how long they’re going to keep this going. Time will tell.
If you want to see visit manipulation check out Google.
Type in the word “jew” and search. The first thing you get is an ‘offensive search result”. Type in any racial slur for any group and you do not get this.
Yet the Chosen people who control the media think they can somehow redirect your search by making you feel guilty to type in “jew”.
Jewish groups, have attempted to pressure Google to alter its automated ranking criteria to prevent sites Jews dont like from receiving a high search page position.
The Jewish goal is censorship of their critics, and the assumption that Jewish groups can decide what is and what is not an “academic resource and waht is Hate speech” based on its position regarding Jews.
Its a question of time until youtube is forecd to censor things Jews dont like or face the lethal charge of ‘anti-semitism’.
I have another workaround for this, seems to be working for me for firefox. Go to tools->options->advanced->network->settings and click auto-detect proxy settings for this network. Try it and see if this will work for you.
The reason why some videos may not be available on the embeddable player is because the uploader of the video can decide if the video is ‘embeddable or not’. This is something out of Youtube’s control since they don’t hold any rights on the video uploaded by a user. So…let’s tone down on the conspiracy
Just to deepen the conspiracy a bit, I’ve been living in Europe for a few months and it’s only when I moved back to SA that I encountered these messages on YouTube…
[…] One blogger has suggested that unplayable YouTube videos embedded elsewhere force viewers to go to YouTube’s website - increasing their traffic and ad impressions. It’s obvious that increased traffic leads to increased ad impressions and therefore monetising prospects, yet I suspect that this is not the case. […]
Good to see you taking on the big brands Jason, and I reckon that’s a fundamental flaw of huge technology brands. Because of the critical mass they acquire they forget why they are in business or do not include a strategy in their business plan for dealing with critical mass. Hence their customer service is either non existing or appalling. The problem they then face as a big brand (and Google will soon face this issue) is a back lash. Very similar to what happened with Microsoft, although with Microsoft they made some very monopolistic and ungenerous decisions (closed vs open software). What happens when you become a huge brand is that you attract criticism. People support the under dog but the tables turn when you start achieving significant critical mass - as has happened with Twitter. Few brands get it right - Apple has. Even though they have made mistakes on a couple of product lines Apple enthusiasts (converts) have been forgiving because Apple has delivered so strongly on others.
What makes it most odd is that there are comments from 5 minutes ago on a video that I’ve been unable to view for over a week. I have it in my favorites and check it every day - I even hit refresh about 20 times but have no been successful all week
Hi Jason, judging by comments most people haven’t figured out the work around I gave earlier. Perhaps an update on your post showing how people can set a proxy, such as dsl-cache.saix.net . It really does do the trick!
The proxy trick does work, but it makes me wonder just what is the issue with Youtube? From reading a number of forums, it seems the issues are mainly for those in Australia and South Africa and places outside America/Europe. Is this a precursor to youtube shutting out foreigners, perhaps following in the steps of Veoh?
It is WHY YOUR ISP (PROVIDER OF INTERNET) MAKES LOAD BALANCE WITH SEVERAL LINKS OF INTERNET, AND YOUR IP LIKELY BE CONSTANTLY CHANGING. SEARCH YOUR PROVIDER WITH INFORMATION ABOUT HIS CHANGE OF IP. A TEST TO MAKE EVEN IF IT IS It ACONTENCENDO, BETWEEN DIFFERENT IN DIFFERENT SITE TO LEARN YOUR IP, AND SEE IF Turns.
Just to add one data point, those people saying that it’s only outside the U.S.–well, it might have been, but that’s no longer the case. I’m in the southeastern U.S. and I’m seeing it and users in the NYC area are seeing it. And the video is “embed-ready” so that’s not the issue, but just as stated: refresh long enough and you’re fine.
[…] under maintenance or just having issues. But unless I’m missing something, this is starting to be a big pain in the ass. You might have seen it on this site, even: a YouTube video comes up with the black nothing and […]
Thanks for the article Jason! Very well researched and written. The best I have read so far. I believe this is a YouTube issue, not a browser or some other kind of issue. I just encountered the problem this week with one of my videos “Google Me” (an original instrumental composition) on my YouTube Channel AnchoriteProductions. Strangely, it WILL play with &fmt=18 after the URL, or if you click “play in high quality” just below the views count. It made me wonder if YouTube was trying some new software in an attempt to improve their overall video quality…..and then, perhaps, something went terribly wrong?!?!? This might explain the deafening silence on the issue: They don’t want to give a press release that says “Hey, we screwed up! Now our service totally sucks!” Anyway, it’s just a thought. I sure would like to know what is going on! I really don’t want to upload anything else until they get this issue resolved. Although, I might upload “Google Me” again just to see what happens and take the first one down. I appreciate the information here Jason! Five stars! -Derek
For some reason, my first “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available” experience was a video I had just watched hours ago before and wanted to see again. Now, I’ve uploaded a video on Youtube YESTERDAY and I’ve been trying to view it but it won’t let me. I tried to on the edit page and I got that message >_> It doesn’t make sense at all. It’s a very short video. Less than half a second long, and it won’t work.
Nice to know that I’m not the only person who’s encouuntered the message before though.
Paranoid much? This is happening because you’re behind a load balancing router. You’re right that youtube should fix that, but it’s no conspiracy; it’s a bug springing from some weird quirk that happens when different IPs try to access the same content, or something weird like that.
strange how few results I was able to get on google searches about this problem. i was convinced my computer had some kind of youtube virus. google searches like “multiple refreshes needed to view youtube” bring up very little.
google is really at the core of the evil. they claim to offer a real, quality search function, yet since the youtube buy out there are always at least a few youtube vids in the top 10 of any results, of course wikipedia and a few others. it’s as if the internet is just google, youtube and wikipedia.
i find youtube offensive. they have a total lake of respect for private property. the company is built on thievery, and exploitation under the guise the ability to create your own videos and put them online. don’t get me wrong, i think it would be wonderful to have a huge online video archive of so much music and popular culture, if the wealth was being shared with the rightful owners of the intellectual property -which it easily could be.
if we had any guts, we end-losers, we’d boycott youtube. personally i’ve never clicked on any ads and never will. but even better would be to stop visiting the site altogether.
power to the peephole
This problem persists with one of my videos “Google Me” (an original guitar instrumental) on my YouTube Channel AnchoriteProductions. I keep getting e-mails asking why I removed it. It does play if you type &fmt=18 after the URL, or if you click “play in high quality” just below the views count, and appears now to be an intermittent problem. I have sent numerous responses to YouTube under their “General Error Messages: We’re sorry this video is no longer…” They used to allow you to type a short comment after answering “No” to the fact the answer they provided was worthless. Now that option is gone. Also, this problem is not listed as one of the current issues they are working on. Bottom line, I have no idea why this is happening, but sure would like to know, and would like to see the issue resolved. So far, Youtube remains deafeningly silent on the issue, which make me cling to the idea it is a server issue, or due to some new software they are testing to try to go to “HQ” videos. At this point, I am looking at other options for posting my fingerstyle guitar videos. Again, I appreciate your article here Jason, and for all the feedback posted! Keep up the excellent research! Hopefully, there will be a solution soon! -Derek
I am experiencing this problem and belive it to be PC specific.I.e if I use another PC on the same network (so all network settings are the same) then it works fine. I recall this happening some time ago too (over a year) and it was a flash player problem. A reinstall of flash player would sort it. However that has nt worked in this instance. I look forward to hearing what the solution is.
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Growing up with Beltel, Trumpet Winsock and a 2400 modem, Jason has been online since high school in the nineties, with the IRC logs to prove it! After heading up web initiatives for an international online marketing group for six years, he left to start his own internet strategy consultancy, establishing a global affiliate revenue stream along the way.
Jason is now co-founder and CEO of Zoopy.com, a social media playground where users upload and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs.
Few things infuriate me. In fact, very few things make me use the word infuriate. But today, as a survivor of rampant, blatant bandwidth theft, I have...
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Thanks for the research. I thought it was just me that had this problem! We even asked our Service Provider if they were blocking YouTube.
I find it hard to believe that Google is displaying this message on purpose in order to drive more traffic. If they are, it’s very dumb wording to use. “This video is no longer available” does not make you reach for the F5 button; it makes you move on.
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