You say like it's something easy anyone can get done. Have you ever tried? If you try to build a sustainable and successful business, you'll see how hard it is.
You said “it cost Google a LOT more than their compensation to make it possible for them to even start working on this project, let alone carrying it forward to completion.” As if Google is groaning under the weight of sacrifices made specifically so these SREs can play in their engineering playground every day. I am saying this is backwards — that there has been no such sacrifice on Google’s part.
they're literally doing that. google has +$300B net positive assets. [1] they could distribute that to stockholders, go to the bahamas and call it a day. but they keep this wealth there so that SWEs can "play" and create stuff for others to use.
yes, they're not a humanitatian org. they do it so that they earn more, then invest more. but they are sacrificing short term gains and risking actually losing money.
That is not their motive or even a secondary consideration for shareholders.
Regarding infra, they were not capable of reaching the scale they needed and were already struggling by the time they got acquired.
On the money side, they couldn't attract advertisers as well as Google.
Given that YouTube was founded by 3 PayPal alums and was angel investor funded while being one of the top most visited sites at the time of its acquisition by Google, I am inclined to believe that their issues you mentioned above and others not mentioned would have been resolved in-house, via their partnership with Google Video or another company, or via acquisition by another company.
I don’t think it’s likely that YouTube would have failed as a company with the founders and investors it had, such as Sequoia, as it was simply too popular. YouTube had already started running ads for ~9 months before acquisition, though they were initially against pre-roll and other site-wide ads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
> Participatory video ads were designed to link specific promotions to specific channels rather than advertising on the entire platform at once. When the ads were introduced, in August 2006, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley rejected the idea of expanding into areas of advertising seen as less user-friendly at the time, saying, "we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they'd probably say no." However, YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.