TLDR: YouTube is creating custom video encoding hardware to lower costs.
This part is just a lie, however, given YouTube frequently practices censorship of political views and ideologies their employees disagree with:
> Our mission is “To give everyone a voice and show them the world.” Let anyone upload a video to show anyone else in the world, for free.
This seems like the same gaslighting we saw recently with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki receiving an award for free expression sponsored by YouTube itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880262