Doubleclick?

Profitable, maybe, but better than before? No.

YouTube's culture and ux have slowly been killed by Google over the years, and the platform is becoming more bland and homogenized as we speak.

I doubt YouTube would have survived the lawsuits that were brewing before they were purchased. And then precedent would have been set against all video sharing sites, so the Internet would have been significantly worse off and streaming and independent content production would have been set back by a decade. I think the Google acquisition was a good thing, even if it means there are ads on videos unless you pay $5/month to remove them.

This an unjustified conclusion if I ever heard one. YouTube was acquired in 2006 by Google. That's 13 years ago.

YouTube has existed for 14 years. It's been Google nearly the entire time it has existed.