For me, as a consumer of video content that I find with google video search, YouTube is just a video host and no different than any other video host that Google

For me, as a consumer of video content that I find with google video search, YouTube is just a video host and no different than any other video host that Google crawl. The vast majority of those searches for me pertain to hands-on DIY projects where videos are very useful to learn how to perform some process - like laying floors (a recent one for me). I would never visit youtube.com directly as I've learned that it's incentives are very different. But most of the really useful content that I find is in fact hosted on YouTube, so the service is in fact extremely useful for DIYers. And I do often find in those videos tools or supplies that make sense to purchase, and I often click on the producers affiliate links in the video.