Google could prepend the ad in such a way that it appears to be part of the main video data stream, so that the ad is impossible to block on a URL basis. I cou

Google could prepend the ad in such a way that it appears to be part of the main video data stream, so that the ad is impossible to block on a URL basis. I could write userland software to automatically skip ahead 30 seconds on any YouTube video. Google could prevent people from skipping the first 30 seconds of any video by delaying the data stream for the remainder of the video at the server level. At that point, I could go outside and watch the sunset. Or, I could buy a frak-ton of EC2 instances and cobble together a crappy IsomorphTube--with discreet text-based ads, which might attract viewers simply because Google had turned YouTube into an armed camp (with forced video viewing for all). Let's remember that even though Google has a huge scale advantage, it isn't Google that's creating the content on YouTube.