Google may not want us to know this, but YouTube isn’t quite as unprofitable as we think
YouTube is a big money-loser for Google, if you believe the Internet giant’s claims—but maybe you shouldn’t. A new study shows that while the video-sharing site still hasn’t become profitable, its losses are $300 million less than usually reported. It may be that Google has an interest in making YouTube seem more unprofitable than it really is, because if it were known that the site is doing better financially, copyright owners would swoop down on Google and demand higher fees for the use of their material on the site (legal and pirated). So if Google starts to make money off YouTube, it will have to pay more money, and therefore it’ll lose more money than it was losing when the site was unprofitable. It’s kind of an Internet Catch-22.