To Take On HBO And Netflix, YouTube Had To Rewire Itself

To become a "destination" and keep mobile viewers hooked, YouTube realized it had to fix itself, from its development platform to its AI.

The war over our eyeballs is heating up, and that's mostly a good thing for people who like to look at screens. Just as Meerkat, Periscope, and Snapchat elbow each other in a battle over appointment viewing, and digitally native companies like Netflix and Hulu duke it out over the future of TV and movies, an old-school competitor shows up and throws down a shiny new gauntlet: Last month, HBO Now launched just in time for cord-cutters to catch the debut of the new season of Game of Thrones. There's never before been such an abundance of quality, readily accessible television fighting for our attention.

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