I actually had trouble finding that out (although I only looked for like, 15 minutes). It's apparently difficult to determine according to some tech websites. I do have this chart that says since 2017 YouTube ad revenue has been 7-11% of Google's global revenue but I don't know if that = profit. Decided to meme anyways because I have ads blocked on PC but still see them on my phone.
I use adguard on ios, also a vpn btw, and blocks all ads in browser and blocks ads in yt videos in their app. Used yattee for a bit, but tbh I didn’t like the UX, then it stopped working so I switched
I've been using revanced for a year and something happened in the past couple of weeks where it just refuses to work and keeps sayi go there's no internet connection :( I have uninstalled and reinstalled/patched things as per instructions and nothing.
Hosting a streaming service is incredibly expensive. Especially at the scale of YouTube. I can imagine YouTube is costing far more for Google than Search itself.
My guess is that YouTube has never really been profitable, which is why they’re pushing users to buy Premium.
Youtube has always claimed that it doesn't turn a profit but I don't believe them. My reasoning is that if the server costs are more than the revenue today, then they're going to be worse tomorrow. A gorillian gigabytes of data are uploaded to that thing every nanosecond. A company can't get exponentially less profitable every second and still survive. And what else is there to prop it up? Google ad results? No way is Youtube not profitable. They're saying that to avoid tax.