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YouTube's $60B revenue revealed amid paid subscriber push
- j45 9mo agoThis puts an interesting perspective on all the acquisitions Google has shuttered, they must not really stand out compared to the winners.
- Briannaj 9mo agoI'd pay more if they let me turn off shorts.
- senectus1 9mo agogods look at what we have become.
- davet91 9mo agoEven as paying customers we still the product somehow.
- thrance 9mo agoEven moreso as a paying customer: being one is a strong signal that you have disposable income.
- siavosh 9mo agoIf u turn off search history they turn all recommendations off which is actually a nice feature.
- postalrat 9mo agoIt's clearly meant as a punishment because they could easily give recommendations based on playlists and such.
- siavosh 9mo agolol yeah at first I was annoyed that they seem to be applying pressure on people without the history feature cause they certainly kept recommending videos to me even though I had that feature off. But a few weeks ago, the screens are all blank imploring me to turn on the history, but I actually quite like it. No more youtube doom scrolling on my phone.
- foretop_yardarm 9mo agoI’ve found turning on the 15m daily limit (the minimum available) has been helpful.
- bradgessler 9mo agoI remember thinking Google paid an absurd and ridiculous sum of money when they acquired YouTube. I couldn’t have been more wrong, what an incredible acquisition.
- CuriouslyC 9mo agoTo be fair, goog has been investing heavily in youtube for ~20 years, and executing pretty well overall, it wasn't a foregone conclusion.
- hsuduebc2 9mo agoIf I remember correctly it wasn't even making any remarkable money in the past.
- bigstrat2003 9mo agoWhich certainly raises the question: are they in fact making money overall on youtube? Considering not just the initial acquisition cost, but also the further investment they put in over the years. I'm not sure how one would find out, but it isn't the slam dunk obvious case that the OP was implying.
- chii 9mo ago> are they in fact making money overall on youtube? if they weren't, won't it make sense to drop it? So by empirical observation of the outcome, it seems like youtube produces enough value to google that it is worth the investment! Now if you ask whether youtube is financially net-positive; ala, if youtube were to be spun off as an individual/separate entity without being owned by google, then that's another question altogether. I have doubts it is financially net-positive without the leverage that google provides in utilizing youtube's assets.
- almosthere 9mo agoYeah don't worry you were in a crowd of 99% of people that thought the same thing.
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- ekianjo 9mo agoRevenue is one thing, would be interested in learning the costs of operating YouTube at scale too.
- stingraycharles 9mo ago> The figure, which totals the money generated through advertising on YouTube as well as paid subscriptions, far surpasses streaming rival Netflix's $45bn revenue. I wonder if this is a fair comparison, though. It strikes me that Netflix’ revenue model is simpler and their costs are also lower, but I guess we won’t know YouTube’s costs any time soon.
- dolphinscorpion 9mo agoWhy would Netflix cost less to run when YT is mostly user generated content? Am I missing something? Both have to stream it
- aaronblohowiak 9mo agoFewer unique video hours, YouTube pays residuals, vastly smaller library to personalize
- LiamPowell 9mo agoNetflix has a far smaller catalogue and can cache content in exchanges very close to the user, see [1]. Also YouTube pays their creators. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Connect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Connect
- danpalmer 9mo agoGoogle has its Global Cache: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Global_Cache https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Global_Cache One might imagine that the cache-ability is lower than Netflix, I can't comment on this, but GGC is very significant.
- zommah 9mo agoNetflix is a production studio with an app, Youtube is a hosting service. 500 hours of video getting uploaded a min plus processing costs (including AI) for no upfront $$s. Far simpler CDN optimization
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- langarus 9mo ago> He said YouTube Premium - its service letting users pay to remove ads between videos, or songs on its music service - had helped boost paid subscriptions across Google consumer services to more than 325 million in 2025 overall. Out of the 60bn they made only 325 ml from paid subscribers. The title made it like it was an important figure. There's also no YOY numbers or profit so it's difficult to draw a conclusion.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Buttons840 9mo ago325 million dollars or paying subscribers (each of whom pays more than a dollar)?
- danpalmer 9mo agoIt's 325 million subscriptions, not $325m.
- firloop 9mo agoYes, and also 325 million subscribers for all of Google, not just YouTube.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- anxrn 9mo ago325M is the number of subscribers, not revenue. Revenue from paid subscriptions is estimated to be about $20B [1] [1] https://outlierkit.com/resources/youtube-60-billion-revenue/ https://outlierkit.com/resources/youtube-60-billion-revenue/
- MarleTangible 9mo agoAnd still no information about how much of the subscription revenue is shared with the content creators. Feels like YouTube is dumping all the money to shorts and other creative accounting, and giving nothing to the creators. Recently a significant percentage of the folks I follow stopped making videos.
- CHB0403085482 9mo agoOct 30, 2024~ YouTube, the video platform Google acquired for $1.65 billion in 2006, has generated $50 billion in combined advertising and subscription revenue. That's a lot of moolah!
- gnarlouse 9mo ago> 'Not just cat videos anymore' Still frankly one of the few redeeming aspects of YouTube. My feed is disastrous.
- ars 9mo ago> My feed is disastrous. I've tested this many times. Your feed has what you watch. If it's disastrous, that's because that what you actually like to watch. Stop watching a topic and it will go away. About 2 months later YouTube will offer it again to see if you want it, if you don't it goes away again.
- catlikesshrimp 9mo agoI don't watch baby content. Somebody at home does, so youtube offers me that. No, we don't share accounts. No, we don't share devices. Sometimes youtube offers me Chinese and Indian content, and ads. I seems your feed is more consistent than mine.
- magicalhippo 9mo agoIt adds some amount of "proxy content". But right-click or long-click and block the channel on the stuff you really don't want. Also if you watch a video you thought was interesting but it was lame, go to history and remove it. And finally if you regularly watch stuff subscribe, it's a strong preference indicator. I do get some junk in my feed now and then, but mostly I discover good stuff I enjoy. And that includes really small channels.
- jmyeet 9mo agoI don't think I ever look at my feed on Youtube and I'm honestly not even sure why. This might just be a byproduct of when I started using it. I don't think I even logged in for the longest time. Even today, I don't subscribe much or even like videos. My usage of Youtube seems to be near 100% intentional, meaning I'm looking for something in particular. I just don't really use Youtube for discovery. I'm sure other people differ. But I really wonder how much of this comes down to the UI and/or algorithm just not being that good. the closest I get really is looking at my home page sometimes and seeing what channels I've previously watched have new videos, basically. Now compare this to Tiktok. My usage of Tiktok is 99% on my fyp. There's a follwoing tab but I basically never use it. Almost everyone I follow I've found on my fyp. It's so good too. A big part is how quickly it learns. Watch one video on a topoic and you'll quickly be prompted with others in that category. But how much of this is just the usage patterns I have chosen with Tiktok that I didn't for Youtube for largely historical reasons? I honestly don't know.
- danpalmer 9mo agoAt this number, YouTube would place 72nd on the Fortune 100 by revenue, and if extracted out of Alphabet, the rest would still be 11th place.
- drnick1 9mo ago> He said YouTube Premium - its service letting users pay to remove ads between videos, or songs on its music service - had helped boost paid subscriptions across Google consumer services to more than 325 million in 2025 overall. 325 million people that don't know about Firefox and uBlock Origin?
- faust201 9mo agoIronically iPhone helps them earn more. Most apple device owners have no choice or awareness.
- manuelmoreale 9mo agoI happily watch adless YouTube on an iPhone. There are definitely choices available. I agree on the awareness though.
- foldshift 9mo agoi am a subscriber as firefox + ublock origin does not work on phone (on android, i think? last time i checked) and neither on smart tvs (mine is rokutv)
- TheBolivianNavy 9mo agoFirefox + uBlock Origin works just fine on Android.
- drnick1 9mo agoNewPipe and IronFox (hardened Firefox) for Android, although I suspect these need to be "sideloaded" as Google won't allow them on the Play Store. (I run Graphene so this does not apply to me.) For the TV, I would suggest VacuumTube (a frontend to the Leanback interface) on a free/libre box running Linux.
- saidinesh5 9mo agoI'm currently using Firefox + ublock origin on Android while typing this...
- desireco42 9mo agoAs to why would someone pay for youtube when you can block ads etc. I have been paying for probably close to 10yrs it not more. Well, first you can use youtube on your phone, tablets etc, without seeing ads ever, I didn't realize youtube has ads. Initially, my kids would ask for toys and fast food that I knew they didn't know anything about. So I realized family subscription is way cheaper then me buying even a single $25 toy, and most of them were more expensive. Over the years, my kids have grown healthier both in mind and body thanks in part of that subscription.
- imp0cat 9mo agoMore screentime leads to healthier kids? Care to elaborate?
- seeg 9mo agoThat's a great business in being paid to show ads by advertisers and not show ads by users.
- strzibny 9mo agoYouTube is replacing my Netflix now, honestly. But I am not happy it being just an algo game, so I am building tubeandchill.com to find good creators, get video tips by newsletter, and more... (tell me what you want to see there, please).
- daft_pink 9mo agoIt’s really bizarre to me that I pay them $80 a month for TV, but most of my value comes from paying them $20 a month for premium (family)