> The content loads off of Google’s own server, not from the website itself.
It seems the author isn't familiar with how CDNs work, how they've been around for many years and how they serve most of the data on the internet.
When you browse YT, the data most likely isn't being served by Google directly, but by a Google-provided rack on your local ISP.
When you browse a newspaper website, it is most likely coming out of an Akamai or some other CDN's server in your local ISP. Akamai by itself serves about 30Tbps of local traffic around the world.
And before these massive CDNs emerged, small ISPs would use caching solutions for static content (most of the web back then).
So we've all been loading content from 3rd party servers for more than a decade, not from the website itself. The internet as it is today is only sustainable because of CDNs.
IMHO, the quoted statement doesn't necessarily preclude CDNs. I think you're reading too much into the phrasing, which like you suggested, is a laypersons view of the internet. To me, it is instantly obvious what the author meant. The question is who controls the platform. For e.g. Are you in control if Google chooses to datamine your readers, or if in the future Google is free to show "suggested" content which is not your own, etc, etc.
> "Are you in control if Google chooses to datamine your readers, or if in the future Google is free to show "suggested" content which is not your own, etc, etc."
Just don't use Google's CDN then, use someone else's, like Cloudflare or Bing.
It seems the author isn't familiar with how CDNs work, how they've been around for many years and how they serve most of the data on the internet.
When you browse YT, the data most likely isn't being served by Google directly, but by a Google-provided rack on your local ISP.
When you browse a newspaper website, it is most likely coming out of an Akamai or some other CDN's server in your local ISP. Akamai by itself serves about 30Tbps of local traffic around the world.
And before these massive CDNs emerged, small ISPs would use caching solutions for static content (most of the web back then).
So we've all been loading content from 3rd party servers for more than a decade, not from the website itself. The internet as it is today is only sustainable because of CDNs.