Google has dramatically altered that deal, and now shows much longer, less-likely-to-be-skippable ads, with much higher frequency.
Calling it "a prety reasonable subscription" is only reasonable if we forget that this wasn't the deal originally offered
Furthermore, this is a massive corporation closing up a project that got it's start by selling itself to geeks as Open.
It is Google's OS, and it is Google's app, but closing up the Open project to advantage their own app sure as hell feels like poor form
YouTube would not be effectively the only game in town if Google hadn't underpriced their product to drive out competitors
In short: If Google had played fair from the beginning, I would have the option to watch streaming semi-pro video elsewhere.
It also allows you to patch other apps to make them work the way you want.