To be honest I'd keep it simple and leave it as is. Just improve the landing page / chrome extension screenshots to have a more obvious value proposition / style. For me the video fails to load on your landing page.
Perhaps it could be misaligned incentives? The primary variable YT optimizes for is time spent on the platform. Being able to instantly find and skip ahead to the part you wanted means you didn’t spend the extra time that you would’ve otherwise.
Granted, I can’t see this specific feature really moving the needle one way or the other. But, internally, they might apply some sort of lens to their decision making that asks “does this increase or decrease time spent and eyeballs monetized?”, and if that is the case then there is a real argument to be made that this feature would not meet the standard for a “good feature”, based off that criteria.
Probably more likely that their entire UI is just so deeply fine tuned and A-B tested that any individual change to it has a lot of friction, lest they push an update that decreases watch time by 0.1%.
I built an extension that injected a search bar into the transcript card. Worked by filtering the YouTube transcripts themselves, and manipulating their display attribute.
Didn't release it to the store because YouTube released a search feature and it looked exactly like mine.
I can name a lot of counterexamples, however most of them are illegal under US federal law so it's a bit of a moot point.
There are legal counterexamples, but the majority that come to mind are equally well-served with fiat. If you ask me to come up with a good, legal reason to hold cryptocurrency, I may well tell you that there is none even if there are a few marginal situations that justify it.
Distributed blockchain applications are normally unnecessary when they are used though, and absolutely overkill when applied with distributed proofs. Very often a network only needs a secured channel to operate, which can be established with much lower overhead than a blockchain. Currency seems to be the only application that would respect such extreme security measures, and that's really only highlighted the low throughput and capacity problems.
I really do feel the same about blockchains as I do about cryptocurrency. Both have extremely limited applications that appear marketable and attractive to nerd-adjacent circles, but only show their drawbacks once fully invested.
The intention behind creating a blockchain (or even some cryptocurrency) is pure in it's inception. The application of both technologies is so messy that I would recommend most people stick with simpler options.
