It’s been close to three years since Google bought YouTube, and so far, the site has cost the search giant a lot more money than it’s made.  But Google’s CEO still believes the situation will right itself, and new info from an analyst goes a little way towards bearing out his line of thought. 

Let’s first look at the statement from Eric Schmidt.  According to Claudine Beaumont, he told shareholders during an annual meeting, “[W]e believe YouTube will eventually be a successful and a profitable business and it will take some time to do it.”

Now for the more objective viewpoint.  Peter Kafka reported that Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay “thinks YouTube has the ability to sell ads against nine percent of its inventory.  That alone represents progress – last year, that number was around three to four percent.  But Lindsay thinks that Google is getting better at putting more advertiser-friendly stuff up on the site, via projects like the TV and movie hub it rolled out last month.”

And if you extrapolate that 2008 to 2009 rate of growth (take your pick of either the doubling-every-year or increasing-five-percent pace), YouTube’s financial problems might indeed be over before too long.

In the meantime, though, there’s (seemingly idle) chatter about Google spinning off the site, and Hulu’s nailed the monetization angle.