Technology

Nah, most people don't give a fuck. If the method of bypassing ads gets too intricate, they'll cave.

Seriously, the vast majority of people just let the ads run, or even watch them. They're either unconcerned, or lazy, sometimes both.

It won't do shit.

Most people will accept Google's cock up their ass and just deal with the ads. Everyone else will find new services or figure out how to continue using ad blockers.

I've have premium because of YT music (formerly Google Play Music) which imo is the best music streaming service. I have the family plan that is me my wife, and three friends, the friend paying their portion of plan.

I like giving money to Google less and less by the day, but I don't mind paying for an ad free service that I use extensively. If they start putting ads in the paid service, I will be dropping immediately.

No, most people really don't care.

Youtube has a captive audience that isn't going anywhere. The platform is too big to die, and too expensive for any challenger to seriously threaten it. And the only users they stand to lose with this move are the users who are costing them money, they don't care if adblock users leave as long as they keep everyone else.

For as long as people have complained about YouTube ads even before they started the crackdown, I don't think it'll matter. Tons of people didn't block them even before the option went away.

Personally, I bit the bullet and got Premium last year because I didn't feel like maintaining a DNS solution on my wifi and like using my TV for it. YouTube is basically the main form of "TV" that I watch when I'm in a couch potato mood. Most actual TV shows that come out aren't interesting to me.

I'm not really advocating everyone just go buy premium. Even in my case I'm not jumping up and down to give Google my money by any means. But for my situation it's an expense that I justify for myself

I don't think it will make enough of an impact for Alphabet to actually give a shit but I agree they're getting out of control with the ads and I think a handful of people will start looking for alternatives. I recently switched from Google to Kagi and I set up Firefox to redirect all YouTube links to Piped lol I think a lot of people are already trying to find alternatives to Google products due to general enshittification but they're so big I don't really see it hurting them in any significant way. I would love to see something actually compete with YouTube though tbh. I personally try to use non Google alternatives whenever possible these days

It’s possible this could begin a regulatory shitstorm. They may realize they’re tempting fate with how hard they’re pushing for profit in bullshit, unethical, sketchy ways.

Then again, some quant will probably walk into the room and present a business plan for regulatory capture of the EU and US and the long term profit that would yield, so they’ll definitely go that route.

I HOPE it does.

The assumpion Google is doing is that people install AdBlockes because they want something free. They seems not to be able to understand that they simply gone too far.

Google had the problem that they must show a ever growing revenue and since they cannot add more eyeball (or data to harvest) they simply need to try to get more from what they had. So as you say, the problem is not the single Ad, or the data harvest or any other single thing they do.
The problem is the sum of all of the things they do. They show multiple Ads, harvest your data, make you pay and still harvest your data and show the Ads.

People simply started to think "since Google want to screw me, then why I should not try to screw them ?"

Use Piped I hear you cry. Great idea. But how long is that going to last? I am certain that youtube and their parent company are feverishly pushing their engineers to find ways through, around, over and under any tool that stops them making money.

It will became the usual armed race, until Google would make their services so disfunctional to even the common user that people will simply stop using them since the value they get from the service is not worth the trouble.

That assuming that in some places (the EU for example) Google would not be hit by some law that force them to stop what they are doing and force them to play by the rules everyone else need to follow.

No. Also AdBlock works again

If YouTube ads were like the ads on Pornhub, 30 seconds long and skippable after 5 seconds, I would be OK with ads these 1min at beginning and same in the middle for a 10min video is just ridiculous.

Honestly, I would be fine with it, if they slashed the price of YT premium by about 60%.

Right now the cost of an individual YT premium membership is about 150SEK/Month, that is far too high.

I watch a LOT of YT on my commute, and I would be fine with paying 60-70SEK/Month.

In some regions the cost of an individual membership is the equivalent of about 20SEK/Month, so it is profitable even at those prices.

It will hurt them a little bit, because it will drive a few people to alternative platforms. However, the majority of their user base is now captive, because they have grown dependent on Alphabet for a number of services. All they have to do is ban a few people from all of Alphabet to set the example, and then 99% of folks will either subscribe or disable their ad blockers. Because getting banned from all of their services would really, really suck for most people who depend on them. Just think of how many non-Alphabet logins would suddenly stop working (either because of federation or gmail dependencies). Not to mention their data saved to the cloud.

Unfortunately, big picture is, they will come out on top. Because of the "embrace, extend, and extinguish" model that they are veterans at. IOW, they know how to royally screw people.

I think our only glimmer of hope is the government continuing to go after monopolies. That's not much of a hope, though.

Hmmm...well, their fight against the adblockers is quite concerning, especially if the ads are so intrusive that they disrupt the user experience in viewing content, thus pushing more users to get Premium or go to another platform. It's not uncommon these days to find people migrating away from Big Tech platforms and going to other platforms that have more reasonable and sustainable services that benefit both the client and the vendor. The challenge is the content, which may not be as numerous as what you would find on YouTube, and along with that, there's the challenge of convincing creators to go onto those other platforms.

But, I am doubtful that Alphabet will be financially impacted. They might see a loss around YouTube, but that loss could be offset by profits from other products in their portfolio. Furthermore, because they have a paid option, it wouldn't be surprising to see people going for that option, especially if the cost is reasonable, and they are getting premium services not just for themselves but also their friends and family.

I wish it would but it won’t.