[alkibiades]

youtube is significantly worse other than maybe in stability/uptime.

remember google tried to force that weird google plus login instead?

and now it’s so corporatized/ad filled

[mochomocha]

In no world would Youtube be even remotely profitable without advertising. Google ran it as a $B+/year loss for years before managing to making it profitable.

Tell me now a believable alternative growth story for Youtube where Google didn't buy it and the service isn't "corporatized" and not losing money.

You can't compare an unprofitable small-scale startup product to what the same product needs to be to make it 1) planet-scale and 2) profitable.

[tempestn]

Yeah, without an acquisition, YouTube doesn't exist today. And most acquisitions would have turned out far worse than the Google one did. (See Evernote...)

[gruez]

When you consider the alternative is no youtube at all (remember, they were hemorrhaging money), everything you described doesn't seem so bad.