Indeed, and as I posted elsewhere these days I'm far less likely to buy into a product where it's not clear how money is being made as was the case for Youtube and the last decade. It's only been free and easily ad-blockable for this long because the Silicon Valley way is to make a product that really can't exist on it's own but survives due to the deep pockets of the company or VC until it dominates the market and then turn the screws. Tie this to the fact these are all publicly traded and there is never enough growth, and we get here.

This is why enshittification is suddenly top of mind for everyone. For the last couple of decades, we've been enjoying the fruits of this model and we're now reaching the part where everything has consolidated and the surviving companies start jacking up prices and so forth. Netflix, Uber, Amazon, Reddit, Google/Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, etc have all done this in one way or another.

But this opinion that some folks seem to have that they are for some reason entitled to gratis, ad-free video streaming is so bizarre.

Agreed, and further if a company today presented this as their model, I would be skeptical as hell and unlikely to even try the service.

That said, I'm not losing any tears for Google. I'm in the US so not subject to this price increase, and while I do pay for Premium and find a lot of value in the service, I wouldn't be able to tolerate a near doubling in price.