I do not mean to bump this thread, but I completely agree with bilawal360, Google makes huge amounts of money on YouTube. Google does not want to own the web. They already own it. They own Google, YouTube and has a lot of other things that people use.
I was thinking about doing something like youtube(much smaller ofcourse)and I was wondering if it could make MONEY. Lets face it, someone is paying for the bandwith and power to run all the stuff on youtube! Not only that, but it runs smooth as well. So how is this done where you dont go broke??
Google was taking a financial loss with youtube to gain control of the market (make sure nobody else can get it). Now G is starting to include ads alongside some videos... in the future they might even show some ads before viewing videos. An interesting bit of news from a few days ago is that Youtube is also getting into the pay for download hollywod movies. They will essentially be taking on Netflix for customers... going to be an interesting battle
Advertising as its major revenue. "However, the development of YouTube is not satisfactory. YouTube has to bear substantial costs of video bandwidth, and is not given the expected large number of advertising revenue. Now YouTube ads are becoming more and more intrusive. Chad Hurley and Steven Chen have felt impotent." - Quoted from my blog http://youtubeking10.blogspot.com/2010/05/youtube-brief-introduction.html
Bandwidth is not a major cost for YT. They 'peer' with most of their connections. In fact, now they are at the edge of Content Delivery Networks. They are already planning a trial in a major city to build out a major 'Fiber to the Home' network in the entire city. So eventually, Google/YT will be connected directly to your home, bypassing most other networks. The tables will turn, and other providers will be paying Google/YT to ride on their network backbone into your home. It all fits nicely in their plan to deliver internet/movies to your TV, which of course will include ads. Sneaky little devils.
Simple answer: ads. Ever see those annoying ads that popup at the base of a video? I bet they're making a fortune off those among others.