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YouTube continues to rake in money from advertisers worldwide, with the video giant’s ad revenue reaching $8.93 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 10.3% year over year — a solid double-digit bump off an already large haul. Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, handily topped Wall Street financial estimates for the period.
YouTube’s ad sales revenue was just a hair short of analyst expectations of $8.97 billion for Q1, according to StreetAccount. The figure does not include billions more in revenue YouTube generates through subscription services like YouTube TV and YouTube Premium, which Alphabet does not break out in earnings reports.
The internet company said it now has more than 270 million paid subscriptions overall, driven by YouTube and Google One, its consumer cloud storage service. YouTube Music and Premium topped 125 million subs during the quarter, and the company expanded its cheaper Premium Lite product to users in the U.S., priced at $7.99 per month (versus $13.99/month for YouTube Premium and $10.99/month for YouTube Music)..
Overall, Alphabet reported revenue of $90.23 billion (up 12%) and net profit of $34.54 billion (up 46%), translating to earnings per share of $2.81. Wall Street was expecting $89.12 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $2.01, according to LSEG Data & Analytics.
“We’re pleased with our strong Q1 results, which reflect healthy growth and momentum across the business,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, said in prepared remarks. “Search saw continued strong growth, boosted by the engagement we’re seeing with features like AI Overviews, which now has 1.5 billion users per month. Driven by YouTube and Google One, we surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions. And Cloud grew rapidly with significant demand for our solutions.”
YouTube, which turned 20 this year, released new stats as part of marking launch in 2005, including touting more than 20 billion videos uploaded to date. For full-year 2024, YouTube had an estimated $54.2 billion in revenue, making it the second-largest media company after Disney, and in 2025 it’s poised to take the No. 1 spot, according to analyst firm MoffettNathanson.
As for how macroeconomic uncertainty might affect the company’s Q2 advertising sales, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on the earnings call Thursday that “it’s too early to really comment on that.” For full-year 2025, he said, new U.S. tariffs “will obviously cause a slight headwind to our ads business” primarily with respect to spending from Asia Pacific-based retailers.
Meanwhile, Google last week was served another legal setback after a U.S. federal judge ruled that Google held illegal monopolies in internet ad-tech markets; Google said it will appeal the decision. That came after an August 2024 ruling by another federal court that Google has a monopoly in internet search and that the company broke the law by inking multibillion-dollar deals to make its search engine the default on browsers and smartphones including devices from Apple and Samsung. The U.S. government has proposed that Google be forced to divest the Chrome browser as a result of its anticompetitive behavior.
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