>That said, I wish that YouTube had multiple competitors of similar size, both commercial and decentralized. It makes me nervous that access to so much great content is ultimately controlled by Google.
If you worked in the SEO world after Google acquired YT it was a common hack to use YT videos to rank for hard keywords because it was proven Google gave YT favorable positions, even compared to other video sites. There were dedicated tools for quickly creating spam videos on topics and then linking people to your website.
YT wasn't completely dominant until they were acquired by Google and had their growth boosted via monopoly tactics using Google Search
If you worked in the SEO world after Google acquired YT it was a common hack to use YT videos to rank for hard keywords because it was proven Google gave YT favorable positions, even compared to other video sites. There were dedicated tools for quickly creating spam videos on topics and then linking people to your website.
YT wasn't completely dominant until they were acquired by Google and had their growth boosted via monopoly tactics using Google Search