I mean without YouTube/ Google the alternative for most creators would be to host the videos themselves. And then you would have like 20 Sites which you had to check yourself regularly to get new videos. I get that YouTube isn’t the best solution, but the alternative is much worse. There is a reason why we don’t all still have our own small WordPress blogs.
You know, RSS exists to literally circumvent this problem, albeit for articles. A lot of sites still have it, people just forgot that this is a thing. Little bit of a chore to setup, but its actually pretty nice. Obviously finding these sites is the hard part, but a good search engine (kagi btw) could make it work.
Also PeerTube exists as well, which reduces the cost of hosting videos.
“most creators would be to host the videos themselves.”
And where the problem is ?