Google warns users of these apps that their experience may deteriorate soon. They may “experience buffering issues” or see errors such as “the following content is not available on this app” when trying to watch videos.
Similar to Google Search, ads have become insufferable for many users of the service. There are too many of them, they may break the viewing experience, and they may show inappropriate content.
YouTube Premium is expensive. What weights more for some users is that its functionality is severely limited when compared to third-party apps.
The cat and mouse game continues.
For those looking to avoid ads or improve privacy, here are some options for free, open source, privacy-friendly frontends to YouTube without advertisements:
Removed by mod
A reddit post from 8 years ago is not going to have up to date information so no, not a valid source, but even in that reddit post many people point out that youtube was breaking even in 2014 not operating at a loss and I find it highly unlikely that the growing YouTube would still be breaking even a decade later. I did read the reddit post and the sources they provide require subscriptions to access. This will be the last I respond to this though since I can’t see this going anywhere, continuing the conversation would be asinine.
But you said they aren’t making a profit. And you could see their revenue heavily increased in the last few years. So something has to give.