I think that the single search box with consistent UX is the killer feature. Subscription is too, in another way. Alternatives need to address these; I believe federated video services / toobs are the only way to aim for the first. Subscriptions should be replaced with RSS.

I stopped using the YouTube site long ago. I only subscribe via Feedly/RSS and watch the videos I want directly with 99% no ads even without an adblocker via the embeded video player.

You can also use a local podcatcher like gPodder to automatically download the videos.

Where do the creators you follow host their videos?

Not op, but op may be using the Youtube Subscription RSS feed. Go to https://www.youtube.com/subscription_manager and scroll to the bottom. You should see a section labeled "Export to RSS readers".

Oh wow, how have I never noticed that.

In fact there are individual channel feeds (https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<>) and this is a wrapper around that. That's great!

I currently receive email notifications for subscriptions, but I've noticed I don't always get emails for all the uploads of some of those channels. A direct RSS feed should solve that problem too.

They're all still on YouTube, but I just subscribe to the YouTube rss feed. Also since they don't get ad revenue, I pay ~$15/month to assorted creators.

I am curious, too.

The blog post mentions 1M views [1]. At €1 per TB [2], and assuming a video of 100Mb which are roughly 1GB, you end up with 1000TB a €1000.

Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even.

[1]: https://www.blender.org/media-exposure/youtube-blocks-blende...

[2]: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud

> Even if Google just pays a fraction like $0.1 per TB, they still have to earn $100 somewhere else to break even.

1. The bad press generated is easily worth more than $100.

2. Youtube exercises the option recommend other videos. Blender gave them 1M opportunities to attract attention to other videos that are monetized.

3. Blender's videos were probably much larger than 100MB. I remember watching several that were over 30mins.

That's a very good question. Supposing YT is still unprofitable after all these years, isn't that evidence of dumping? In other words, evidence of Google/Alphabet illegally pushing in to take over this market?

There's a bunch of Salad Fingers videos on Youtube.