Youtube’s main value is it’s market dominance. That’s why it’s so terrible to use, there’s no competitive incentive to actually improve the user aspects of the service (the advertisers are a COMPLETELY different ballgame tho), they already own the video space and have google/alphabet’s financial muscle to keep competitors away.

> Is Youtube even profitable?

Yes, extremely[1].

Google (and most large bandwidth users) doesn't pay for bandwidth because they have peering agreements. Storage is cheap.

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...

You link does not say if it's profitable.

Revenue != Profit.

Agreed.

Hence my comments pointing out that the things that most people seem to think stop YouTube from being profitable (bandwidth and storage) aren't really factors for Google.

Under Google not so much. But you just need liquidity for R&D, the point being you will develop new concepts that will improve profits. Netflix,hulu,amazon prime all came after youtube,perhaps good R&D without Alaphapet's shackles would have let them compete in those markets and more (video conferencing for example like zoom).

Netflix had a profitable dvd business, Hulu has the backing of major studios, Prime has Amazon.

I dont think Youtube would have survived without Google.