A common model is to have a free tier subsidized by the premium users. The free users still provide value to the company, because they're all prospective premium users.

Might not work here, we are not on the inside so can't see.

If youtube can't make it work, I hope they go bust so that something better can take their place.

What they are doing is working great... not sure why you would say that. They are the most popular platform, fantastic services and adding more, and easy to pay to remove ads for a reasonable amount of money. Their model is working great from a business and service perspective.

What else do you want?

You want it to be free for you where you don't have to pay anything to use it? Seems like you don't have a realistic view of what it costs to run / build / maintain this.

I've served terabytes worth of video content from my home internet connection, for free.

Congrats?

You're correct that I don't know how to run YouTube, the company, but I absolutely know what it takes to serve video. I'd like to see more people who aren't YouTube operating in the same sector.

Hopefully you can see how the chasm between those two things is like the Grand Canyon :)

I love "the confidence" as I think that is what makes a great entrepreneur who says something like "Oh that is easy, I can do that", cut to 10 years later and a lot of pain, and maybe they have...

It's so sad to hear people talk like this. Can you not imagine anyone doing anything just for public good?

Sigh, almost nothing can survive without money to pay for it. Either through donations, some type of business model, etc.

My day to day "job" is something for the public good and I do it without getting paid for it. But it still has to make money to survive even with that.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Even small non-profits have operating costs to cover.

When we’re talking about consistently serving video at the scale they are, those costs won’t be minute.

Obviously they’re looking to turn a profit (if not profiting already), but I don’t think the situation changes dramatically either way.