Who knows?
But what I do know is that about half of the YouTube channels I follow have already started putting videos up on other services -- they're eager to get out of the YouTube ecosystem. And I'm eager to follow them.
If DuckDuckGo's any indication then I'm holding out hope for new challengers.
They always come back within a few days.
So long as 99% of users stay there, creators will stay there. If creators leave, that leaves a gap that'll quickly be filled by another creator. Youtube needs to do something that makes the viewers absolutely give up, and that's when migration will happen. I can't really imagine anything that'd do that except requiring paid accounts to view any content.
Alternatively, if some competitor comes along, has all the same content Youtube has, and offers better payments for creators without caving in to every single copyright claim, that'd draw people in like nothing else. But that's seemingly impossible now that the web isn't a wild west anymore.
YT is about the only player in the market that the MPAA can't scrounge enough pocket change to meet the price of, but they don't have to because it plays ball with their demands.
Does Google care when their products fail? No, they just move on to the next data vacuum one of their developers designed or that they acquired.
1. It's the second largest search engine in the world, and likely the GO TO search engine for any DIY / Howto type topic. Keeping control of this keeps them in control of search field.
2. It's a massive platform for adsense. Having a single stop for advertisers on both the web and on youtube helps keep google ahead of it's competitors in advertising
3. The unspoken advantage it gives google in the world of machine language and AI. Endless natural language data in every language you can imagine, facial recognition, etc etc.
I highly doubt they care how much money it loses.