Is YouTube Still a Money Pit? Or Is Google Just Really, Really Modest?

A year ago, Google CFO Patrick Pichette predicted that YouTube, the company’s famously unprofitable video site, could be “very profitable” in the “not long, too long distance future”. So has that happened yet?

Pichette won’t say. “Look, we don’t comment on YouTube. What I can tell you is that we’re incredibly pleased by its trajectory,” he told an analyst during the company’s Q2 earnings call today, adding ““Reading the tea leaves, it’s a great business for us.”

Which is pretty much what Pichette said a year ago. So has anything changed?

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. If so, then we may never know if the world’s biggest video site moves from money pit to money maker.

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.

Pichette did mention that the company has spent $100 million in the YouTube/Viacom copyright case it appears to have won, and that it considers the money well-spent. Not only does it make the company feel good about itself, but it should make it easier for it sell ads to skittish buyers.

Meantime, if you want to assess YouTube’s financial performance, you can either rely on optimistic noises coming from the company or third-party estimates — Citigroup thinks it will be a billion-dollar business next year.

Or you can just visit the site yourself, where you’ll be confronted with an ever-increasing barrage of ads, including the dreaded pre-roll ads that YouTube once talked about with disdain.

And then you get to decided for yourself what that means.

EARLIER:

Here’s the first crack at Google’s Q2 earnings: The search giant generated revenues of $5.09 billion and adjusted earnings of $6.45 a share. The Street was looking for $4.99 billion and $6.52 per share.

Shares are down more than 2 percent in the aftermarket, as investors digest the numbers.

Mark Mahaney’s “cheat sheet” can help you interpret results:

Eric Schmidt’s take:

Google had a strong second quarter. Solid growth in our core business and very strong growth in our emerging businesses drove 24% revenue growth year over year. We saw strength in every major product area, as more and more traditional brand advertisers embraced search advertising and as large advertisers increasingly ran integrated campaigns across search, display, and mobile. We feel confident about our future, and plan to continue to invest aggressively in our core areas of strategic focus.