From the "what took you so long?" file...Seriously, The Verge, what took you so long?

Without further do, I give you this post from The Verge:

YouTube has been pissing me off for weeks. I’m starting to feel like I should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups Google sends me almost daily. Google has decided to place pop-up ads in its own YouTube app for Premium subscriptions. This feels slightly acceptable at first, but Google has also decided these should spam you to death, sometimes full-screen, with no option to permanently dismiss them so you see them all the damn time.

It’s a classic growth hack designed to get more people to use YouTube Music or YouTube Premium because, honestly, who cares about either of those services? I already subscribe to Spotify, which is far superior to YouTube Music, and I’d never pay $11.99 just to have fewer YouTube ads and background playback of videos on my phone. It’s a pointless subscription that Google is trying to lazily ram down my throat instead of improving its offering, competing fairly with others, and, most importantly, focusing on its customer experience.

Google’s efforts here have made sure I, and I bet many others, will never touch YouTube Music or YouTube Premium. I absolutely loathe both of these services to the point where I’m left swearing at my phone like an idiot, simply because these stubborn ads keep appearing on top of the YouTube videos I’m trying to watch.

Where to start? How about with the fact that YouTube's mobile app hasn't been exhibiting this behaviour for mere weeks. YouTube has been pissing me off with this bullshit for months. Or with the fact that feeling like making users feel they "should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups"is the entire fucking point of the pop-ups.

You're not telling Google that their shit ain't working, The Verge; you're telling them that it works.

It's worse than just the YouTube app, though. Google also altered the default behaviour of Android apps, generally, to make this bullshit harder to work around. 

Android apps used to have a button in the lower left by default that could be pressed and held to access split screen functionality. Now, that button is gone, replaced by a "hamburger" button which opens up an app-switching screen that allows you to move from one active app to the next; to access the split-screen functionality from there, you need to press and hold the icon at the top of an app's window (not the window, mind you, just the icon at the top of it), something which isn't documented anywhere in Android itself that I can see.

This is not an accident. As TechCrunch wrote in their article, "Kill the Hamburger Button," 

[...] what’s out of sight is out of mind. Any navigation options you hide behind the hamburger will be forgotten, or at least used a lot less.

This is why the split-screen function is hidden behind a hamburger button, and further obfuscated by merging it with the icon at the top of an app's miniaturized window.

The YouTube app's nag screens can be easily worked around by watching YouTube in split-screen mode, allowing you to do other things with your phone at the same time. That's not good enough for Google, though, who want you to devote all of your attention to their app, and then pay extra for what used to be basic, built-in functionality. So, no more split-screen for you; not unless you're willing to dig for it. I dug for it, but many users won't.

The Verge isn't done, of course; like any modern media outlet, they go on to "all sides" the issue by detailing practices that Apple and Microsoft don't engage in anymore. They then add this pearl of wisdom:

It’s also super anti-competitive. Apple, Google, and Microsoft don’t allow third-party developers to abuse their platforms with these types of pop-ups, so why do these giant tech companies think it’s fine just because they’re in control?

I just want to open up the YouTube app and not be counting the seconds until I see another one of these damn pop-ups. Google, do better.

Will they, though? Will they do better? Because it's been most of a year since this shit started, and nearly six months since the split-screen function was buried by an Android system update that I didn't even know was happening, and they don't seem to be tiring of their own bullshit anytime soon.

Elizabeth Warren and other U.S. lawmakers are talking openly about the need for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to be investigated for anti-trust violations, and maybe even broken up. I'm starting to agree.

Google's search/advertising business, their Android/phone business, and their YouTube business would seem to be obvious candidates for being hived off into separate entities. And, if Google don't start taking this shit a lot more seriously, and soon, they likely will be. And, if that should happen, I will be among those saying that they brought it on themselves.