YouTube’s Revenue Soars 84% to $7 Billion in Q2

The Google-owned video giant is now neck-and-neck with Netflix’s quarterly revenue

YouTube’s big run during the COVID-19 pandemic continued during the second quarter, with Google reporting on Tuesday the internet video giant brought in $7 billion in revenue during Q2.

The $7 billion in sales set a new quarterly record for YouTube and was an 84% increase from the same time last year, when YouTube brought in about $3.8 billion. Wall Street analysts were looking for YouTube’s Q2 sales to hit $6.4 billion.

YouTube’s big second quarter nearly matched the $7.34 billion Netflix reported in Q2 revenue last week. (And for more details on Netflix’s Q2 performance — including the company losing subscribers in the U.S. for only the second time ever — click here.)

The latest YouTube update came as Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, reported its Q2 earnings on Tuesday. Overall, the tech giant posted $61.9 billion in sales — up more than 60% from last year — and is now within striking distance of becoming the third company to hit a $2 trillion market cap, after Apple and Microsoft.

On Alphabet’s earnings call on Tuesday, CEO Sundar Pichai said YouTube Shorts — the company’s short-form video feature that’s similar to TikTok — topped 15 billion global daily views during the second quarter. That was up big from the 6.5 billion daily views Shorts pulled in during the first quarter, but that also makes sense, considering Shorts rolled out to the U.S. and other markets during Q2.

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