Two months ago, Sundar Pichai announced a new era of belt-tightening at Google, resulting in the closure of the Pixel laptop hardware team, the culling of half of the pilot projects in Area 120 projects, the spin-off of Project Loon technology, and the death of Google Stadia. YouTube could be next in the icy hand of Google’s budget department. MacRumors reports that YouTube is experimenting with paid access to 4K video resolution, making it exclusive to YouTube Premium subscribers.
This experiment affecting some users has been reported over the past month. When choosing a resolution, all options are available except for “2160p”(4K), next to which is a small “Premium”label. It will be $11.99 per month if you want to access the highest definition videos. Google’s recently shut down game streaming service, Stadia, had a similar billing setup, where 4K was the premium add-on.
So, after testing up to 12 YouTube ads for non-premium users, now some users have reported that they also need to get a premium account just to watch videos in 4K. pic.twitter.com/jJodoAxeDp
— Alvin (@sondesix) October 1, 2022
This isn’t Google’s only recent push to boost YouTube’s revenue. Last month, some users saw up to 10 unskippable ads before a video. Criticism was strong and Google later called the move an “experiment”that it “finished”which apparently means it’s not happening. We might see something similar happen to the idea of 4K paywalls, depending on how the reception goes. We requested a comment from Google’s PR department, but the company said it had nothing to share yet.
The YouTube Twitter account recently confirmed the experiment and offered to provide feedback on the change.