YouTube made waves on the interwebs recently when it appeared to slow to a crawl for millions of users. It turns out the cause was a bug for users with ad blockers. Whether intentional or not, Google remains tight-lipped about the incident and shows no sign of stopping its losing war on ad blockers.
Look, we get it, Google. You depend on ads for the billions of dollars you make each year from your dominance of the internet, monopoly fines be damned. But YouTube is kind of a sacred cow for us regular folks. You are really messing things up with your intrusive, non-stop ads and the underhanded ways in which you deal with our attempts to block them. Nobody trusts you now. Seriously.
Value proposition
Why should anyone subscribe to YouTube Premium?
I pay for YouTube Premium because of YouTube Music and the support it gives to creators. I appreciate that. The value proposition for a YouTube Premium subscription is undeniable. Plus, I don’t need to mess around with ad blockers as a subscriber, and I’ll be honest here: I’ve never really had much success with them.
I probably wouldn’t use YouTube if I didn’t pay for Premium. I’ve tried, and the experience with ads sucks, so I understand why tens of millions turn to ad blockers, especially when Premium costs so much and comes with a music sub subscribers may not want. In the end, I have a family, and we all visit YouTube daily. So, while I don’t care if I miss out on my boring 8K drone footage tours of little towns, my son needs his Skippity Toilet fix. YouTube Premium is worth it for my family.
But why can’t Google compete on value? After all, people who appreciate value are going to subscribe or deal with ads on a service they feel they are supporting. But nope, why would Google compete in a fair market when it can strong-arm users into not using ad blockers through its browser dominance across the internet? The corporate megalodon has decided to start a stupid, unwinnable war on ad blockers, which means the entire world is quick to blame Google when there are innocent casualties.
Lest we not forget, even the FBI recommends using an ad blocker when online, and that has everything to do with the security risk ads pose, ads that Google has itself served.
Google’s YouTube blockade
If you wish to watch with no ads, you’ll have to pay for YouTube Music
It doesn’t seem to be so much about ads as brute-forcing subscriber numbers. That is, it seems as if Google is trying to terrorize people into subscribing to YouTube Premium. Plenty of users are getting the impression that Google has weaponized ads on YouTube. Reddit is filled with posts about people noticing horrible lag on videos and five-second loading delays when ad blockers are enabled.
Some users report that videos just flat-out won’t play, as we reported back in November. And in case you have the patience of a saint and decide to sit out the ads, hoping for that magnificent Skip Ads button, well, Google has fuddled with that, too. The company has made it painfully tiny. Good luck whacking that with those big meat thumbs of yours.
Google knows we want to watch YouTube, and it knows that we’ll bounce away once we’re hit with our third or fourth ad in a row. So if we want to see the video without atomic levels of rage building up as endless ads play, well then, we’ll need to subscribe. It’s corporate bullying at its worst.
The plot thickens
Google isn’t always to blame, both sides of the ad blocker war are acting irresponsible
The most recent ad-blocker debacle saw everyone blaming Google for a bug that turned out to be on the ad-blocker side of things, as pointed out in a GitHub post from Adblock Plus. Google wasn’t up to its usual shenanigans after all, but nobody cared.
The fact it wasn’t Google’s fault didn’t stop people from blaming Google, with Reddit once again up in arms. The anger was real and visceral. The site formerly known as Twitter (X) is also filled with memes and vitriol against Google for every perceived slight. People are not happy with the company in the slightest.
And Google hasn’t done much to soothe emotions, either. The company remains tight-lipped, though a Google spokesperson did make a statement to Android Central to clarify it wasn’t Google’s fault this time. uBlock Origin developer R. Hill even Tweeted (Xeeted?) that the ad blocker was the cause of the issue.
But most people didn’t notice. After all, anger had been building for some time, and the uBlock bug sounded exactly like something Google would pull to disenfranchise ad-block users.
The ripple effect
After years of abuse, nobody trusts Google
Google is a company that seems to live with constant user distrust. I say this as a fan of Google, and I mean no disrespect to my favorite tech giant. The brand doesn’t do much to repair bridges it demolishes on its way to wherever it’s trying to head.
Remember all the various apocalypses over the past few years? The first was back in 2017 when advertisers fled YouTube en masse after a weird algorithm change. There was another in 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. You know when everyone was at home watching YouTube? Somehow, Google dropped the ball on what should have been a golden opportunity and then proceeded to say nothing about it. Of course, all the advertisers came back eventually.
As the years go on, users learn more and more that they shouldn’t put much faith in Google, either. We know the company is reaping our data, and there isn’t much in our personal lives about which Google’s mysterious algorithms don’t know. We also live with the constant worry about which of our favorite Google apps and services will end up in the graveyard. I still haven’t found a replacement for Inbox or Reader. Now I worry about Keep and Tasks. I don’t trust that Google won’t give up on RCS, either. As a user, I kind of have one eye on alternatives at all times, just in case. YouTube’s users are doing the same.
So, how will Google’s war on ad blockers ripple out to other areas of Google? There’s bound to be some effect. A loss of users could drive away advertisers. Or, in the more likely scenario, a valid YouTube competitor will eventually rise up and take over where Google screwed the pooch. It’s looking more and more like TikTok might be that competitor as it begins to experiment with 30-minute landscape videos. If creators flock to TikTok, then so will the users, leaving Google and its ad kingdom to rot.
What’s Google’s endgame?
More money at the expense of users, clearly
I can’t help but feel that Google’s entire handling of ad blockers is short-sighted, especially when you consider there is a competing platform waiting in the wings when it comes to YouTube. People really don’t like being treated the way Google is treating us when it comes to ads on YouTube. Sure, you can move to Albania and get an ad-free experience, but let’s be real here. Do the execs making these decisions actually believe they can get a mass of the YouTube audience to fork out $15 a month to remove ads? Sure, I’m someone who does pay, but like I said, I still have my eye on alternatives.
What is Google’s end goal? It’s hard to say. It should be focused on making the internet great again for its users, but this ridiculous war on ad blockers is doing the exact opposite, which tells you everything you need to know about Google’s priorities and what it thinks of its users.
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