Tech

Google claims YouTube is 10x as popular as Netflix or Facebook video, and approaching TV

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google
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The amount of video that YouTube users around the world watch each day is now almost as much as all U.S. TV watching combined, the company said on Monday.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

The amount of video footage viewed on YouTube is growing and passed 1 billion hours a day, YouTube said in a blog post. Nielsen data shows the 1.25 billion hours of TV watched and recorded in America each day is shrinking, the Journal reported.

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The viewership numbers on YouTube mark a 10-fold increase since 2012, the company told the Journal, and compare to 116 million hours streamed on Netflix and 100 million hours streamed on Facebook.

YouTube's viewership is a key metric for analysts that cover Alphabet's stock, as it is one of the few big streams of money that is not disclosed in Google's earnings. The Journal reports that it generated $4 billion in revenue and broke even in 2014, citing anonymous sources familiar with the division's finances.

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