They used to back in the internet explorer era have the fastest web engine. The reason they aren’t talked about much these days is because they are yet another chromium browser.

Production, sure. Operational costs, not so much zero. I don’t understand how people think video streaming on any scale can be supported without any income. I don’t think they’re recent pricehike is reasonable, but to think anyone deserves to be able to stream 4k video (albeit low bit rate) without any sort of compensation is beyond me.

I pay for Youtube Premium, because I get a legit way to bypass ads and the creators I watch gets payed more than if I watched ads, but I also use an adblocker pretty much everywhere because they are intrusive and annoying. However I’m not under any illusion that doing so does directly hurt the income of the sites I visit.