[alex7734]

I'd rather stop watching YouTube than start watching ads. I disabled my adblocker to see how bad is it and it is truly disgusting, I cannot conceive how people can enjoy YouTube with so many ads.

And before you say "just pay YouTube Premium", no, the moment a majority of people start paying $10 (or whatever it is) for YouTube Premium, Google is going to add ads to it again and make you pay $20 for YouTube Premium For Real(TM) to get rid of the ads (and/or just make the free tier miserable to prevent people from stopping paying). Google has proven that it is not above abusing the user to get money and there's no reason not to abuse the user further once you have them hooked after all.

[_cenw]

Is there any precedent at all for this? This feels more like a Netflix than a Google move. Google's consumer facing offerings have not really rubbed me the wrong way yet, except maybe the consolidation of music services into their worse one.

Ads pay near to nothing compared to a subscription. Why would they jeopardize that. Even someone who buys Premium in a country where it's exceptionally cheap makes them more money than an ad user.