The conflict is that curation / recommendation is profitable because it "closes the loop" on the skinner box, you can push towards content that will keep people

The conflict is that curation / recommendation is profitable because it "closes the loop" on the skinner box, you can push towards content that will keep people watching or that makes more money. But Google don't want to be responsible for "recommendations" their own algorithms generate. So they need to figure out a way to make responsibility for the actual content somebody else's problem while still being able to "optimise for engagement" a.k.a direct the click stream.