... or a media feedback loop occurred in the middle of a slow news cycle. Given a choice between conspiracy vs. systems doing what systems do, I'll go with systems.

I have heard that what you say is true if and only if you are the exclusive owner of your work. For example, if your publisher has any ownership stake at all (quite likely) then you're basically fucked. Is that bullshit?

The Record Industry's Crisis Writ Large

There, fixed that for you. The record industry is the one that makes money on recordings. The music industry is the one that makes money on music in general including concerts. The music industry is fine and will be fine. The record industry is fucked.

Commoditized space junk. Lovely. And for only $800 I will personally throw a piece of plastic into the North Pacific Gyre on your behalf.

So what? They're different cases, so a rational mind takes them one at a time and is free to come to different conclusions for each.

Sure, as Search consumers you and I are freely able to choose one search engine over another, but are advertisers freely able to choose a competitor's ad platform over Google's? I mean, they could choose to not get eyeballs on ads, but that's not what they're in business to do.

Google said "Trust us, investors: We're going to continue giving away Search for free and figure out how to monetize it later. But trust us, you'll get rich!"

... and they were right! This gave Google a lot of credibility when they said "Trust us, investors: We're going to continue giving away YouTube for free and figure out how to monetize it later. But trust us, you'll get rich!"

... except they were wrong. YouTube costs Google investors more money than it returns with no signs that dynamic will shift. In fact, it's probably getting worse over time: Google loses money on every YouTube visit; increasing market share or total visits just makes the investor loses worse.

So Google must do something to turn YouTube profitable or their credibility with investors to "Give away free for now and monetize later" will be shot.

Did you read the next paragraph, or understand the rest of TFA?

The PIN doesn't return us to the Web password mess: it never leaves our machine and can't be seen by phishers.