The profit motive is showing its true colors. It'd be a very tough argument to claim that "YouTube Red" is playing a vital role in Google's attempt to organize the world's data. It's purely a grab for revenue/profit.

Netflix (as well as HBO, and many others) already has commercial free streaming movies. HULU (as well as others) now has commercial free streaming tv. Content wise, what YouTube brings to the table is the user generated content, and YouTube Red does not seem to be centered around user generated content. I'd say user generated content is caught up in the mix, if anything. Google could index HULU and Netflix instead of creating YouTube Red.

Also, it is a false choice to say, given the assumption of ad-free services, I should either have to pay for ads or Google should take a loss in revenue. There are many other business models, such as P2P, that could facilitate ad-free user generated content channels.

The rub? P2P doesn't work too well with commercial content generation. And so, we find ourselves back to ads vs subscriptions, and back to the revenue grab.

When talent at Google is working on YouTube Red, it's not working on other problems. I can think of many other problems I'd rather see Google working on, given their core competencies.