I suspect that if Google hadn’t bought them, it would have been only a matter of time. Storage back then was hella expensive and without the ad cache, i don’t know they could have afforded to grow and stay ‘free’.

YouTube was pretty damned good for quite a while, even after Google purchased it.

Back in the day, when you got 1 30-second ad, or even two 30-second ads, right in the center.

Things started to go to shit around the 1 min unskippable ads.