My impression is that this was due to some legal constraint. I vaguely remember ...

wutbrodo on Jan 22, 2022 | parent | context | favorite | on: Ask HN: What's Up with Google?

My impression is that this was due to some legal constraint. I vaguely remember hearing about some legal pressure that prioritizing YouTube results was abusing monopoly power, and then shortly after that noticing as a user that YouTube became surprisingly uncommon as a result. It still annoys me.