Are we forgetting that Google is the company that seems to kill more products than any other [1]? Just because they got bought by Google doesn’t mean YouTube gets a free ride with guaranteed support.

Back before the acquisition, YouTube was losing hundreds of millions of dollars. They were burning so much runway the company was essentially an all-in moonshot to get acquired by one of the big players (Google being the most likely buyer).

Since then, their costs have only grown and rather dramatically at that. They are far larger in terms of users and the videos far higher quality than they were back then.

So why do people continue expecting Google to subsidize YouTube and run it at a loss?

[1] https://killedbygoogle.com/

The make uploaders pay to keep their ad-free videos saved to the service. 1 penny per minute of saved video a year should do the trick.

A nickel per minute / month if they want to get greedy about it.