Google Is Trying To Destroy Creators But YouTube Is Great, Here’s Why They Are Different

Posted by Joshua Tyler | Updated 2 weeks ago

You might think that YouTube and Google are the same since they are both owned by the same company. But they are so completely different that not only Google engineers can’t communicate with YouTubers, they also don’t know how to use the product.

This was confirmed for me when I attended Google’s 2024 developer conference. When I talked to Google engineers and used it as a comparison, they admitted that they didn’t know anything about YouTube, and I had to spend ten minutes explaining how the basic methods of sister type and user links work.

As both a new YouTuber and first time web publishers, it’s great information to have because it explains something I’ve been wondering about for the past year.

Why is Google such a tire fire, while YouTube seems to be getting better and better? They both own the same company, after all.

The Difference Between Google and YouTube

After spending a day at Google talking to their team and last year building a YouTube channel from scratch, I think there is a definite answer.

YouTube wants creators to succeed. Google doesn’t want to.

YouTube built the entire interface to help people who use it, to create better content. It makes sense, as videos get better on YouTube, people will want to use YouTube.

Google’s approach is to treat all creators as enemies, in an effort to protect themselves from potential spammers. They lie and destroy creators, setting traps to misdirect them while deliberately hiding useful data and performance metrics. They do this out of fear that if someone figures out how to do what Google wants them to do, it will somehow change their algorithm.

When I upload a video to YouTube, I get clear reports that tell me all the details of what worked and what didn’t. It’s not just a traffic report, but an in-depth and easy-to-understand summary of how people interacted and appreciated, or didn’t know, every part of what you created and published on their site. It’s not just about explaining what your audience thought; it goes further and explains what the site’s algorithm thought of what you did, too.

YouTube then gives us real, specific, and easy-to-use recommendations that, if followed, will help you do even better next time. These are real recommendations that actually the will work if you use them.

Google gives you Search Console, which tells you when they penalized or rewarded your site but not how or why.

If there is a problem with your channel, YouTube gives you a claim as a warning, so you know what you did wrong and can avoid doing it again.

If you make a mistake on Google, even a small one, they block your site forever and refuse to tell you what’s wrong.

In my case, they went even further and banned me as a person by issuing vague manual bans on all the websites I own. They were quickly removed, but I still don’t know why I got them.

YouTube Wants You To Be Better, Google Wants You To Go

YouTube is a product built by making yourself better, by making the people who use it better.

Google is a brand built on paranoia and the innate belief that no matter how good their content is, people will still use it because of brand recognition.

When I explained YouTube’s philosophy to those Google engineers, they seemed confused, as if I were speaking another language. To them what I explained that YouTube was doing was crazy, and they wanted no part of it.

Although Google and YouTube are both owned by Alphabet, only one of them has a future.