In the entirety of my YouTube use (circa 2006!) I think I've left ~3 comments. I've never seen comments as a core feature of why I use YouTube so this won't change my perceived usefulness of it.
This reminds me of Facebook's changes in ~2010: They changed the entire layout of the site twice in the same year and there was noticeable backlash, but everyone quickly got over it and (more importantly) usage kept going up. At this point YouTube accounts for 18% of US traffic[1]... I don't think there's a substitute premium video service that has the infrastructure to support that level of usage.
This reminds me of Facebook's changes in ~2010: They changed the entire layout of the site twice in the same year and there was noticeable backlash, but everyone quickly got over it and (more importantly) usage kept going up. At this point YouTube accounts for 18% of US traffic[1]... I don't think there's a substitute premium video service that has the infrastructure to support that level of usage.
[1] http://allthingsd.com/20131111/netflix-youtube-half-your-bro...