> That's disingenuous because you're omitting the other half of the transaction: You are choosing, voluntarily, to consume the content that they are offering on their website. The implied arrangement is that you watch the ads (at least the first five seconds until the skip button appears) in exchange for them doing all the work of collecting, hosting, and delivering that content to you.

Yet Google, like Microsoft back in the day when piracy of Windows was rampant, would rather adblock users still use their site. They have the means to make it close-to impossible to watch YouTube with an adblocker, but they chose not to.

Clearly they believe that adblock users still provide net-positive value to them.