3) Realize that if your product isn't free, it's not competing with Google.
The hard part is reconciling all of these things at once. Google wins because they know people like low barriers-of-entry. Type in a search query and get "instant" results mixed with "instant" advertising. Delve into a YouTube video before getting sucker-punched by an ad a minute or two later. Fulfilling and monetizing our knee-jerk desires is what makes and keeps Google successful.
YouTube has two things that I think make it hard to unseat:
1. It is very popular, people publishing there can pick up views for basically free. People go there to find videos. There are lots of eyeballs that you can pick up just by showing up.
2. It has ready-to-go monetization. Most major publishers will supplement YouTube ads with direct sponsors and merch sales, but having a baseline income available is a major benefit. Also people blame YouTube for the annoying ads, not you.
Both can be worked around, but you are fighting a major uphill that doesn't really have anything to do with the technical challenge.
The most important difference between YouTube and any other video entertainment service is that they do not pre-audit content creators and content. Anybody and everybody can publish there and start building their audience. You don't have to be from the right family, have the right political connections and right political opinions, or do unspeakable sexual acts for casting managers. You can be independent, and unlike Instagram, Facebook and etc, you can make money on your work.
Android is also big, if someone comes out with really great smart glasses before existing big tech can, then they might have a chance to be part of big tech
Another advantage Google had was timing, they are now so vertically integrated, such as custom asic for YouTube encoding tasks, that it becomes quite capital intensive to compete
2) Kill YouTube (somehow)
3) Realize that if your product isn't free, it's not competing with Google.
The hard part is reconciling all of these things at once. Google wins because they know people like low barriers-of-entry. Type in a search query and get "instant" results mixed with "instant" advertising. Delve into a YouTube video before getting sucker-punched by an ad a minute or two later. Fulfilling and monetizing our knee-jerk desires is what makes and keeps Google successful.