but it’s obvious that a service like YouTube, that lets you upload and watch as many videos as you want
Google owns enough infrastructure that the actual cost is much lower than you would expect (hence the significant barriers to entry for any competitors).
I genuinely doubt running a service that allows people to upload ~270.000 hours of videos a day and that makes those videos available almost instantly is cheap, or that they’d own the infrastructure to do so regardless of whether they own YouTube or not.
Google owns enough infrastructure that the actual cost is much lower than you would expect (hence the significant barriers to entry for any competitors).
I genuinely doubt running a service that allows people to upload ~270.000 hours of videos a day and that makes those videos available almost instantly is cheap, or that they’d own the infrastructure to do so regardless of whether they own YouTube or not.