YouTube "Like" Button Is Gone

That's no different from people paying others to 'Like' their videos or buying views to increase their popularity.

I personally think it's a good development, especially the fact that videos need to be watched all of the way through to be rated.

Google is trying to kill two birds with one stone.
Spam and shmoozing.

People have this inane yearning for a "like," leading
to all sorts of crapola.

Savvy youtube users have know that copying the
tags and description of the top rated videos will
shmooze the results to show your video on the most
irrelevant searches.

So they are turning to social. And since google+ is their
baby, hey, why not?

They are going social because they can no longer rely
on pure results. So, they are putting the people in charge.
(power to the people!) That is, they will see how many times
videos are actually watched all the way through, which vidoes
get passed around, which videos get the most use from
keyword searches, etc. Forgive me for not being able to
put it better, but google has boatloads of engineers just
chomping at the bit to revamp how a video gets shown
in results.

They are trying to think about real people searching for videos.
Go figure. They are NOT thinking about people who have used
and abused youtube for ages.

I myself have just scratched the surface of youtube and
monetization.

I say good riddance to anything that gums up the works
of what youtube was supposed to be.

But then, that's what search results are supposed to be as well...
Now you know the rest of the story.

However, the like button is still there for my videos at the moment.

Google owns youtube. They can do whatever they want to with it. Owning
and operating youtube is hardly taking over the world. Use it or don't
use it. The choice is yours. But if you choose to use it, play by their
rules. Or, buy lots of stock and vote.

Paul