> Does it cost money to run? Yes. Does Google deserve to have those costs covered? Yes

Those are not the terms of the implicit (and somewhat explicit) deal Google/YT originally offered.

Any and every net pundit and idiot pointed out at the start that any video hosting system that became as successful as YT said it wanted to be (and has become) would cost a fortune to provide.

YT could have said from the start "once this scales beyond <small scale> we'll need to charge <X> because the only alternative to that are ads". But they never said that, they just gave us ads even if we didn't want them.