New figures show that the Google-owned video sharing site will lose a mere $174 million (£107m) this year, much less than the $472m (£321m) loss estimated by in April.
This means that Google is much closer to recouping the $1.65 billion (£970m) it paid for the site two years ago, despite the fact that its fledgling commercial model is yet to get off the ground.
RampRate claims that YouTube, which streams more than 1.2 billion videos, is only paying out around $83m (£51m) a year in operating costs, only a fraction of the $375m (£231m) Credit Suisse claimed the site was shelling out for bandwidth, server farms and ‘peering' agreements with ISPs and cable operators.
If the figures are accurate YouTube could break even much earlier than expected. Google is currently attempting to generate revenue from the video sharing site in a variety of ways. As well as ramping up the YouTube's ad offering, Google recently announced plans to allow users to pay to download video content to their desktop or MP3 player. It is also introducing a ‘click-to-buy' e-commerce service that will allow users to purchase products that appear in video clips.
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