If Google can't make money with YouTube, I wonder how sites like Vimeo can continue to host 500mb videos and survive. Personally, I think some sort of paid account on YouTube might be good, and cut down all the crappy videos that liter the search results and block the good ones.
People really dont seem to read the posts on the topics. Google loosing money article is old. Google does not spend that much to run youtube below is what i wrote on a previous post on this topic.
but Google earns from adword more than youtube lost it is profited for Google so Google is providing this you tube for free
Ok, everyone can rest easy. Google is not shutting down Youtube anytime soon. According to Google: With revenue estimates ranging from $120 million to $500 million, and costs on an equally large spectrum, it seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about our business. The truth is that all our infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to bandwidth and similar costs. We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad. http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/10/19/youtubes-bandwidth-cheap-but-not-free/ Google has peering relationships to reduce traffic costs and they have TONS of dark fiber so they have bandwidth to spare.
Exactly, all reports on how much Google make or lose on YouTube are speculation at best, scare mongering at worst. That fact is, until Google release a breakdown on their storage/bandwidth costs, then nobody but Google will know if they make a lose or profit. The recent investments Google have made on things like dark fiber, peering, codec technologies like On2 etc, etc, etc have most likely put Google in a position where profit is just around the corner (if not already here). But that just my optimistic, speculative point of view Cheers James
Youtube isn't going anywhere... that is why the CEO Eric Schmidt asked the board to approve 1Billion dollar premium for Youtube... meaning to pay $1 Billion more than what Youtube was actually worth... why?... "It actually becomes worth the additional value because Google can tie all of its advertising expertise and search traffic into YouTube," "It's not like it's going to pay back that $1.6 billion any time soon, but what it does is, it ensures that these millions and millions of viewers are coming to a Google-owned site rather than someone's else's site...As a loss leader goes, if it never makes its money back, its still going to be worth it." http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10360384-261.html Google seen that Youtube was stomping the pants off of Google Video and they made damn sure that Yahoo or Microsoft was going to own this property...
Run one and you'll see. Mine is going on 9 years now - 500-600 visitors/day, it makes $300/year through paid ads. It's pathetic. There's no way (at least that I know of) to run in-video ads, nobody ever clicks banners - when they do, the clicks are .02-.05 cents, and you never sell anything through affiliate programs.
So was stage6 but it still shut down. Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage6 Oh wait, I think that was already mentioned.
Why does Google go and share revenue with some of the highest earners then?? If they don't make a huge amount of revenue from youtube, no one told them to share the money. They had it coming and if they don't do something about that fast, there will be a major shutdown on the internet and not to mention the amount of data lost!
Google will absolutely not close Youtube. They simply can't. They would at most sell it but they will not do that either. Would you close or sell Youtube if you were Google? I definitely would not. What I would do and what expectedly Google will do is to take some action and increase the quality. A number of things could be done here, including the deletion of millions of crap videos that does no good for any of us and that does not earn a cent to Google. Afterall, this is business and Google will not be emotional on this.
youtube is too popular to shut it down.. they will not do that for sure.. we might see a new way google maximize their revenue through youtube.. wait and see..
Figures are not really believable. I see these post all over youtube that Google is being sold to Walt disney or some random company Youtube is here to stay. They will stuff more ads and Take creators of Ad Block softwares to court.
There is a problem, that people mostly sharing their own video on youtube and there is not much suitable ads for them. At the moment YT only lives because it's part of Google brand. It's a hard problem to turn it in profitable business.
I think they just need to cut a few unnecessary staff members stop with the site upgrades (there was nothing wrong with how the old site ran) and increase ad costs that get displayed on youtube. I am sure big companies like Nike, Mc Donalds and any big brand would pay millions to advertiser there for a week or 2.
I think Youtube's problem is the amount of garbage on there. For example, I've seen a lot of, say, 5 minute videos where 3 minutes should have been edited out. And there are quadruplicates of many artists. Say Lady Gaga's Poker Face or maybe Johnny Cash's I walk the Line. They should start culling all videos that are not paid for with some kind of user account, down to a 3 to 5 minute limit. They could probably cleanse half the hard drive space that way. And they should charge a modest user fee, say $5 per year, for people to upload anything over 5 to 10 videos. The embedding feature must be sucking them dry. They should set a limit on how many times a video will display on a non-paying website. Video eats megs. It's one reason I pretty much abandoned taking video with my camera and stick with images now. Even my hard drive was getting filled pretty quick. Really increased my defrag time too.
they wont shut it down..knowing that the site has its own bunch of visitors..they'll find out howto gain from it..