Earlier this month, I did a blog entry looking at whether YouTube could survive. It' s yet to turn a profit and looked like leaving a big hole in Google's bottom line, taking half a billion bucks off its profit.

Now Google has come back, saying it expects YouTube will be profitable. One day. Soon. Don't ask when.

Google's chief financial officer Patrick Pichette says he expects YouTube will be profitable "in the not long, too long distance future". Whatever that may mean.

Google claims YouTube is now monetizing three times the number of partner videos than it was doing a year ago, although how that translates that to the bottom line remains as vague as ever.

Google is under pressure now with its sales growth slipping, so it might be time to change YouTube's business model. One analyst suggests it should start charging users for uploading new videos that can't be monetized through advertising.

Not a bad idea, but slapping a fee on to something that had been free would be a challenge for any company. Newspapers are starting to discover that by charging for online content.