YouTube Downloaders: The Ethics and Google's Strategy

The author, a former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek, reveals past self-censorship regarding YouTube downloaders, explaining the reasons behind it: reliance on Google ad revenue and fear of violating YouTube's terms of service. Now free from these constraints, the author recommends several excellent free YouTube downloaders and delves into the ethics of using them, Google's strategy, and the ineffectiveness of lengthy EULAs. The author argues that downloading YouTube videos is akin to printing web pages or saving images – a reasonable backup practice. Google tacitly approves the existence of downloaders, even benefiting from them to solidify YouTube's dominance.