This Kid Holds YouTube's Death Rattle

By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 12, 2009 7:23 PM CDT

Hey, you! Yes, you, the guy who keeps posting video of your nephew batting a ball into your brother’s family jewels. You’re going to kill YouTube, warns Benjamin Wayne of Silicon Alley Insider. Owner Google will lose $470 million this year on YouTube because, he writes, “less and less of YouTube’s library will be revenue-contributing, while the costs of delivering that library will continue to grow.”

The professional content that brings in ad revenue is growing, but not fast enough to keep up with the cost of storing all those amateur videos. “At some juncture,” Wayne predicts, “shareholders will ask hard questions about why Google is sacrificing half a billion dollars to support a project whose chances of providing a return, at any point, is dubious at best.”
(More YouTube stories.)

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