YouTube experiment makes 4K videos a Premium-exclusive feature - Ars Technica

Two months ago, Sundar Pichai announced a new era of belt-tightening at Google, leading to the shutdown of the Pixel laptop hardware team, a culling of half of the experimental projects at Area 120, a spinoff of Project Loon's technology, and the death of Google Stadia.

MacRumors reports that YouTube is experimenting with paywalling 4K video resolution for videos, making it exclusive to subscribers of YouTube Premium.

Reports of this experiment hitting some users have been popping up for the past month.

So, after testing up to 12 ads on YouTube for non-Premium users, now some users reported that they also have to get a Premium account just to watch videos in 4K.

This isn't the only YouTube revenue-boosting experiment Google has tried lately.

Criticism was strong, and Google later called the move an "experiment" that it "concluded," which apparently means it's not happening.