[woevdbz]

This sounds like a content acquisition strategy. YouTube's embedded player isn't very good for the average branded website, as it shows a bunch of "related videos" and links that usually take the user to other content. This leads content creators away from using YouTube as a video CDN for their websites, because I guess YouTube would rather not be a freebie CDN. Except I guess for some strategic content like education, they seem to be OK serving as a CDN for the partner's website ("distraction free" I guess means YouTube's eating up the video distribution cost on those websites without making money), and this gives YouTube more video content into their library, that they can turn around and recommend in their apps