Over the last few days, there has been a lot of speculation in the industry about who will power tonight’s YouTube Live event– whether YouTube will announce their own live service, acquire a live streaming platform, or simply stream the event live using a CDN.
Any move by Google/YouTube in offering or acquiring a Live streaming service would obviously be very important to our company and live streaming industry – so as you can imagine I have watching the story very closely.
Earlier today, TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington posted further comment on the speculation that YouTube might be partnering with Ustream.tv for this event and reached out to us for comments.
My answer earlier today :
“We are not powering it – although as you can imagine Mogulus would obviously be interested to partner with Google/Youtube.
If I was to speculate, I think that Youtube will use an established and traditional content delivery network (CDN) such as Akamai who can cover the Tokyo event too and build a simple Flash player themselves. Google would pay the CDN premium fees for bandwidth for it. They probably contracted multiple CDNs to ensure scalability and have insurance if one has trouble with the load.
Partnering with someone like ustream.tv who has not yet proven more than 80,000 streams nor has servers around the world could be risky for your first LIVE show- but who knows – this is only speculation – we will find out later tonight !”
The event has just gone live and by looking at the player and HTML code, we found that our prediction was correct. YouTube is not launching any live service and has chosen AKAMAI to stream this one-off event using a custom Flash player built by web agency Digitaria (See the publishing points used by the player http://live.youtube.digitaria.com/site/streams.xml – edgefcs.net is registered to AKAMAI)
So how do content delivery networks (CDN) such as AKAMAI compare to live streaming platforms like Mogulus?
CDN’s have been around for nearly 10 years and have been streaming live video for most of that time. CDNs like Akamai are behind the scene at Mogulus.com to help us scale our live streaming and on-demand capacity.
The difference between CDNs and Mogulus is that with CDNs:
(A) you must negotiate a full contract for weeks, with lengthy commitments
(B) there are no free options; you have to pay per gigabyte streamed
(C) you only get the network basics, and will need to build and integrate your own player
(D) you don’t get any Mogulus features like broadcast graphics, remote multi-camera mixing, server-based recording, etc.
Mogulus is a service that offers producers a turnkey solution to go live on their website within minutes and at no cost. Mogulus did not invent live streaming; we packaged all the things you need–including a CDN– into a free, easy-to-use solution.
You can compare this to YouTube. YouTube did not invent video on-demand, but they did make it easy enough for anyone to publish videos to millions–without any understanding of CDNs, player development or video encoding.
Mogulus does the same for live video.
As we roll out Mogulus Pro next month and continue to break scalability records, we believe that media companies will increasingly move towards white-label, turnkey solutions such as Mogulus for their live streaming– instead of building their own solution ‘from scratch’, each time, with a CDN.
Mogulus Blog » Blog Archive » YouTube Live: Unofficial numbers a clear testimony to live streaming
November 22nd, 2008 11:26 pm[...] a follow-up to our previous post Who Powered YouTube Live?, we are glad to publish the unofficial peak concurrent viewers for the event. Akamai publishes [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers
November 22nd, 2008 11:44 pm[...] building their own streaming media CDN, they chose to work with Akamai (see screen shot below). See this Mogulus blog post for an overview of the differences. One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers : VCsAndAngels - Venture Capital / VCs, Angel Investors, Startup News, Etc
November 23rd, 2008 12:23 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers | American News World - News And Technology
November 23rd, 2008 1:02 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
Ajax Girl » Blog Archive » Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers
November 23rd, 2008 1:48 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers | All tech stuff
November 23rd, 2008 4:50 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
Mogulus Blog » Blog Archive » Who powered Youtube Live? An … | kozmom //
November 23rd, 2008 8:33 am[...] details: Mogulus Blog » Blog Archive » Who powered Youtube Live? An … [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers | Christian eBuddy Blog
November 23rd, 2008 9:34 pm[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
Google partnered with Akamai for YouTube Live Event
November 24th, 2008 4:49 am[...] but based on public Akamai before/ after numbers during the time. Mogulus reports that Google partnered with content delivery network Akamai to support all the users. (Note Mogulus is a competitor in the space of content delivery/ streaming [...]
700 mila per Youtube video - Vittorio Pasteris
November 24th, 2008 6:15 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with much [...]
Simon
November 24th, 2008 7:43 amWe will certainly be sticking with Mogulus if they will have us. I think any media or news agency would do too.
Here’s looking forward to the release of Pro.
Well done guys.
The Scripts Zone » Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers
November 24th, 2008 8:20 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]
html editor | HP.com HP United States
November 29th, 2008 11:58 pm[...] Who powered Youtube Live? An Industry Comment … or acquiring a Live streaming service would obviously be very important to our company and live streaming industry – so as you can imagine I have watching the story very closely. Earlier today, TechCrunch Editor Michael Arrington posted further comment on the speculation that YouTube might … [...]
Google Relies On Akamai To Stream YouTube Live; 700,000 Concurrent Viewers | Trinitude Network
April 28th, 2009 1:23 am[...] this, but it’s fairly trivial to detect (see screen shot below). Why did they go with Akamai instead of partnering? One key factor may be that Mogulus, Ustream and Justin.tv haven’t streamed live events with [...]