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BREAKING: YouTube Still Isn't Profitable. But It Will Be, Says Google. Again.

September 9, 2010 at 9:38 am PT

Officially, Google doesn’t talk about YouTube’s profitability, or lack thereof. Except, of course, when Google executives do talk about it.

Then they say that YouTube is very close to becoming profitable.

That’s what CFO Patrick Pichette said in July 2009. And that’s what sales boss Nikesh Arora said in July of this year. And that’s what CEO Eric Schmidt said today, according to Dow Jones Newswires:

“YouTube is ‘nearing profitability and its revenue is doing quite well,’ Schmidt told journalists at the sidelines of a conference at the French university SciencesPo. ‘It looks like it’s going to be very successful,’ he said.”

Okay. So does anyone want to guess when, if ever, Google will tell us that YouTube is actually profitable?

Tagged with: advertising, digital, Dow Jones Newswires, entertainment, Eric Schmidt, Google, Internet, MediaMemo, Nikesh Arora, Patrick Pichette, Peter Kafka, search, software, television, video, YouTube

comments so far. Add yours.

http://garyfales.com/ asset protection

I have a lot of music on YouTube, my own music. There is a new technology that allows people to download MP3s from YouTube videos. So, how can something like YouTube ever become profitable? If YouTube is used to market entertainment like music, it’s value will decrease as music becomes open sourced through illegal sharing.
http://business2press.com Hercules K

What websites need to do today is try to better monetize, fewer and fewer people are clicking web-based advertisements, and not to mention the significant percentage of people who don’t even see ads with ad-block software.
Anonymous

Illegal sharing is not “open source”. Open source is a term of art, it has an actual meaning. The author has to open the work up and even so they maintain copyright. To open source some music, you would have to release the original source, i.e. the multitrack masters, plus a license that instructs the user what they can and can’t do with those masters without violating your copyright.

There is old technology that enables you to put your music in iTunes Store and show an iTunes Store link to every viewer of your YouTube videos. Most people are happy to pay for the music they like if you make it easy for them to do so. You can set your price low in iTunes now to encourage them to buy, not steal.

YouTube sells ads, so they don’t really care whether the content producers make money or not.
Anonymous

The wierd advertising model of success being based not on paying for the product itself but on an unrelated other product has infected too much of out economy. We watch tv for the shows but pay for them via the ads. Jobs/insurance; newspapers/ads; homes/schools; movies/popcorn. Its so insidious we can’t even see it. Bold new idea: like it, pay for it!