It is a disservice to users of the service to whittle down this issue to 2 simple points. Under Google's lead, YouTube has been offering a service - as we've been accustomed to accessing it - since 2006. That's ~17 years.
Suddenly, they want to change the very nature of their business model. It is no longer the YouTube we've been accustomed to accessing for those ~17 years. A no log-in required service, ad-blockers, plenty of browser extensions, etc..
Let's keep in mind that YouTube made ~$29.2 billion in revenue in 2022 [0, 1]. They reported 2.7 billion active users in 2023 - this makes them second only to Facebook.
Its YouTube Premium Service has 80 million subscribers (as of September 11, 2022). Netflix, in comparison, has 247 million subscribers worldwide (3rd qrt, 2023) [2]. Disney+ has 146 million worldwide subscribers (3rd qtr, 2023) but they've been bleeding subscribers [3]. These are actual Premium Video Services.
YouTube is trying to be both an annoying (ad-ridden) general video site and a very expensive premium site. I call this arrogance.
Basically... YouTube is doing very well financially right now ($29 billion). They want to make even more money because $282.8 billion (2022) in revenue for Alphabet is not enough [4]. We can all see the greed.
The problem... Google wants to do this by changing the core of their business as far as access is concerned. It is this change to their core business model that we are up in arms about. It will no longer be the same site.
Isn't there still not a lot of information on YouTube's profitability?
I don't think it takes $29 billion to run it but if it hypothetically took say $24 billion that is a 20% revenue loss from take a loss in the billions.
I tried looking for this but failed to find anything. I also thought about how these multi-billion dollar companies hide profits behind tax codes so that - many times - they pay little or no taxes. This, more than anything else, makes the search for real profits very difficult.
Netflix made ~$31.6 billion in revenue worldwide and they are profitable - as well as undisputed leaders in the Premium Video Category.
Google is so quick to kill projects that, I think, if YT wasn't (happily) successful it would have made changes long ago.
Netflix has 250m subscribers and made $4.492B in net profit.
YouTube has 2.7 billion users.
If YouTube paid per user what Netflix did they would go broke.
So it isn't as simple as "Netflix does okay".
Especially since you say these changes make you want to leave the platform. Why would you expect YouTube to cause that kind of damage earlier than necessary?
I don't claim they need this to survive, just that it is hard to know how profitable they are without any real numbers.
The Netflix to YouTube comparison is an apples to oranges one.
I would compare TikTok and/or Facebbok to YouTube before I make comparisons to Netflix because their business models align... attracting as many eyeballs as possible. That's it. Numbers for its sake.
Through our efforts - they did just that. They were successful in attracting over 2.5 billion active monthly users. That was their main goal.
It was up to them to monetize it in a way that didn't chase users away. They did that for nearly 17 years. There were no complaints at any time.
It was sort of like Microsoft's monopoly on Operating Systems. They rather we pirate their OS than take the chance we would get comfortable using another OS. Well, Google was the same. They rather some of us use ad-blockers than possibly use another service - ie, keeping those eyeballs only on their site.
I do not see Google doing anything to keep me (and many millions of others) from leaving. Quite the opposite. Nowadays, I have basically moved over to TikTok - their actual competitor. Their hardball tactics mean little to me. They may also be losing an entire younger generation (too tired to source this).
Maybe they just resigned to losing the numbers game and are trying to segue into increasing revenue. I don't know. Netflix/Disney/Amazon are there the same way Facebook was there when they tried Google+. TikTok is also there for the short-form, creator stuff. YouTube is surrounded...
Google seems to not understand the market anymore but they're trying to keep investors happy with revenue growth.
It really makes no difference to me what Google does. I shrug. Their only hope to fend off TikTok is government intervention. Attempts, as is common knowledge, have already been made.
You vastly overestimate the impact these changes will make IMHO. Unless there are numbers backing up that they lost users there isn't proof that locking down had negative impacts.
I don't care how you feel about Google, I am just pointing out that "they made a lot of money" has an asterisk.
It is a disservice to users of the service to whittle down this issue to 2 simple points. Under Google's lead, YouTube has been offering a service - as we've been accustomed to accessing it - since 2006. That's ~17 years.
Suddenly, they want to change the very nature of their business model. It is no longer the YouTube we've been accustomed to accessing for those ~17 years. A no log-in required service, ad-blockers, plenty of browser extensions, etc..
Let's keep in mind that YouTube made ~$29.2 billion in revenue in 2022 [0, 1]. They reported 2.7 billion active users in 2023 - this makes them second only to Facebook.
Its YouTube Premium Service has 80 million subscribers (as of September 11, 2022). Netflix, in comparison, has 247 million subscribers worldwide (3rd qrt, 2023) [2]. Disney+ has 146 million worldwide subscribers (3rd qtr, 2023) but they've been bleeding subscribers [3]. These are actual Premium Video Services.
YouTube is trying to be both an annoying (ad-ridden) general video site and a very expensive premium site. I call this arrogance.
Basically... YouTube is doing very well financially right now ($29 billion). They want to make even more money because $282.8 billion (2022) in revenue for Alphabet is not enough [4]. We can all see the greed.
The problem... Google wants to do this by changing the core of their business as far as access is concerned. It is this change to their core business model that we are up in arms about. It will no longer be the same site.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube?useskin=vector
[1] https://www.businessofapps.com/data/youtube-statistics/
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250934/quarterly-number-...
[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1095372/disney-plus-numb...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc.?useskin=vector