alt Hacker NewsGP and I are apparently from that universe where you remember that YouTube wasn't the only popular video on demand game in town and, e.g., Vimeo is older than YouTube. They only won because they didn't charge you for uploading or watching. They could afford to undercut the competition since they were bought by Google.
They were also somehow the only ones that offered music videos without being shut down.
As you yourself have stated in your comment, they were never competitors to YouTube because they monetized video upload...
I guess the only thing you've done is create a massive cognitive dissonance instead of multiverse travel.