That article is junk, assumptions with no actual facts. This is pretty much tech tabloid.
The article, which I wrote, backs up every fact with a source or explanation.
Youtube videos can be taken down relatively easily with report or direct takedowns. Compared to those search takedowns are a last resort and mostly used on very pirate-oriented sites. This article makes it seem like google's doing something really tricky when they're not.
The article says that Google will be penalizing sites now if they have to many DMCA takedown requests that Google has acted upon -- but only web search takedowns. Since YouTube has a separate takedown system, it doesn't get counted against all those other sites, even though potentially, it has a huge number. We don't know, because Google doesn't report them. I don't think Google's trying to be tricky in doing this. I just think that, as a consequence of how it handles DMCA requests, YouTube is getting a huge pass that other sites won't get.
That doesn't make any sense. All those other sites get DMCA requests and handle them and don't even tell google about them.
Only search takedowns matter, and there is nothing special about youtube when it comes to search takedowns.