Bloomberg’s Mark Bergen is the world’s top Google Kremlinologist, chronicling the rise and fall of technocrats and technologies inside Google parent company Alphabet.
This week, Bergen published a book on Google subsidiary YouTube called Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination.
That Bergen decided to set his sights on YouTube, Google’s massive user-generated video site, reflects YouTube’s significance inside of parent company Alphabet. The video platform is shaping culture worldwide without receiving Facebook-level scrutiny.
Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan and I talked with Bergen on this week’s Dead Cat about his new book and YouTube’s ascendancy.
We asked:
Why does YouTube's early legal battle with Viacom explain how YouTube evolved?
What does it mean that YouTube star PewDiePiew has been displaced by a ubiquitous Mr. Beast?
Why has YouTube been so weak willed about punishing the worst actors on its platform?
Give it a listen.
Like, Comment, Subscribe (w/Mark Bergen)