For while now, we’ve been puzzled by the surprisingly large number of industry analysts operating under the assumption that “internet video” represents just another (albeit fast-growing) computer/web browser use case.  It  comes up most often during panel discussions and articles covering the seemingly intractable problem of how to monetize internet video – “how can we get internet video users tolerate a TV-like higher ad load?” is often the point at which shoulders start to shrug, hands get thrown up in the air, and the discussion grinds to a halt.

“By making the internet video user experience more like TV” is one obvious answer – and one that at least allows the discussion to continue…

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2005:  YouTube loses $271 million

2006:  YouTube loses $276 million

2007:  Google buys YouTube for $1.7 billion

Google doesn’t break out how much YouTube is losing.  However, the pesky problem of just how to monetize user-generated video clips remains unsolved while the dramatic growth in YouTube viewership continues unabated – with nothing to offset the costs of scaling up bandwidth and hardware to meet the increasing demand,  is it unreasonable to estimate that YouTube may be losing somewhere upwards of $1 million per day by now?

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