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Even simple web apps can benefit from web platform improvements. JS, HTML, and CSS have all gotten significantly better in recent years.

But YouTube is also a very complex app. Yes it "just" exists to play videos, but the app is so much more than a video player. Browsing, searching, comments, chat, playlists, YT Live, subscriptions, profiles, ratings... there's a lot there.

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And which of those things that people could build already in mid-90s require some nebulous unspecified "new broswer features"?

Perhaps they could start with just cutting down their bloated 100x-duplicated 4MB CSS file?

<video> tag is probably the biggest change, but I still remember YT used SWF/FLV before then (and likely could still do today).

However, it's clear that the devs are mainly composed of trendchasing sheeple who have drunk the Goog-Aid and are addicted to newness and reinventing wheels to make them square... because they have to justify their existence.

YT2009 and WarpStream (Protoweb) prove the old YouTube can still work today. The new one is just a cat and mouse game of diminishing returns.

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