• MediaMemo, Friday, July 16, 2010 1:46 PM

So, is YouTube making any money for Google yet? As MediaMemo notes, Google CFO Patrick Pichette predicted a year ago that YouTube could be "very profitable" in the "not long, too long distance future". But, whether or not Pichette's prediction has come true isn't entirely clear.

"Look, we don't comment on YouTube," he told one analyst during Google's second quarter earnings call on Thursday. "What I can tell you is that we're incredibly pleased by its trajectory ... Reading the tea leaves, it's a great business for us." To be fair, "It's possible, theoretically, that YouTube is indeed profitable, but Google doesn't want to break out the numbers for the unit because doing so might shed too much light on the rest of the company's business," reasons MediaMemo's Peter Kafka. "But my hunch is that Google would very much like to be able to tell analysts that its big, long-term bet on the site has paid off ... And that it finally has the big new revenue stream that Wall Street is always looking for." As comScore reported earlier this week, Hulu has an audience less than 20% the size of YouTube's, but generates more than twice the amount of video ad views.

Read the whole story at MediaMemo »