I get where you are coming from, however it’s important to remember that big players are not equal - they have really, really different people in the leadership. Elmo is just a too-big-to-fall clown with insane ego, spez is a manchild who took VC money like there’s no tomorrow and in the end had no idea how to provide ROI, but youtube is ran by very competent people with solid track record and deep pockets.

Maybe they are not too innovative business-wise recently… but they are good at catching up (except live streaming - screen layout is dogshit and nobody wants to get hyped in their tiny chatbox from a fucking google account with family photo as an avatar) and at leveraging what they already have, which is quite a lot, tbh.

Yt makes a series of bad decisions

It’s not like it’s making any bad decisions right now. Pretty calculated, I’d say - they feel safe market-wise, so they can increase amount of ads/fight ad-blockers/push people to buy subscription.