YouTube generated over $50 billion in revenue for Google last year, so you'd expect the company to have a dedicated team focused on improving the platform and maximizing its value. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

It appears that Google has opted to invest as little as possible into YouTube, with those in charge more interested in squeezing every last dollar from the platform, often at the expense of user experience.

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Over the past few years, Google has taken a heavy-handed approach to censoring and demonetizing creators' content, which has fueled frustration among both viewers and creators alike. Yet, despite these controversial moves, there have been no meaningful improvements to the platform. In fact, the YouTube apps remain riddled with bugs and often feel like they're stuck in a perpetual state of disarray. Basic features, like selecting and deleting multiple videos from your Watch Later list, are still missing in 2024, making tasks that should be simple a time-consuming chore.

The Apple TV app, for example, seems to be going in the opposite direction of progress. Features that were once available, like keyboard navigation and search, were removed years ago and have never been reinstated. Voice search, which was once functional, has been broken for a while, and no new features have been introduced to compensate for the loss.

As someone who has been a loyal YouTube user since 2006, it's disheartening to see how the leadership at Google is eroding the platform's reputation. At this point, all we can hope for is a serious competitor to emerge and provide Google with the motivation to truly care about YouTube again.