[bromix]

....
Yes, it was a pain for the twitter clients that had to do the same thing, but it was the only way for them to function. Agree it should be plan B.

Ultimately, as long as we don't show their advertisements, google is incentivized to block our access. And even if we do show their ads, they often have corporate goals that don't align with what users want-- for example, they blocked youtube clients on windows phone even when microsoft disallowed video downloading and showed their ads, because they wanted to promote android.

Exactly like twitter, google really wants youtube users to use the standard HTML5 youtube client, because they completely control the experience. They haven't completely cut off API users because that would cause more fuss than slowly choking them to death through ever more nonsensical and painful restrictions.

I think plan B will come faster than I thought

Today in the morning I noticed the quota exceeded again. But I thought about your suggestion and did a little dirty testing
The plausible solution would be to provide a separate KEY (or KEYs) for all calls which are not connected to the account - for example all search relevant calls (basic search, live streams, popular right now and related to the video) will have a separate KEY. The search costs us the most of the quota and can even used by users who are not logged in.

This has 2 benefits - first, we could shape the depletion of the quota for all users who are connected with their account (that's the first priority). Second, if a 'quota exceeded' should occur again, than only for search relevant things. After that we could determine if we need to iterate more keys (if needed).

But this will be my next step for the 5.1.0 release.