Jan 21, 2011 16:19 GMT  ·  By

YouTube is going from strength to strength lately. While there still no word from Google on how much it's adding to the bottom line, the company did say that the video site doubled its revenue in 2010.

Of course, without an actual number, that's not worth very much, but it does seem in line with some of the more optimistic estimates and it is likely that YouTube is bringing in more than $1 billion in a year.

Google's financial report for the fourth quarter of 2010 was filled with surprises and the fact that revenue grew 26 percent was not one of them. Eric Schmidt will be replaced by Larry Page as CEO. He will also be selling a portion of his stock.

But towards the end of the customary earnings call with members of the press, CFO Patrick Pichette revealed the fact that YouTube had more than doubled its revenue in the past year. He would not provide a figure though.

2009 estimates put YouTube revenue at $450 million. At the time the site was losing money, though analysts didn't agree on how much. Figures ranged from less than $200 million to close to $500 million in losses.

But analysts said 2010 was going to be a big year for the site, with some putting forward figures as high as $1 billion in revenue. Earlier than that, Google said that the site would be profitable soon enough.

While Google is not saying anything about profitability, revenue has clearly been on the rise since YouTube doubled down on advertising in the past year.

While YouTube clearly grew in 2010, breaking usage record after record, its costs probably didn't double in that time so it's safe to assume that, if Google believed in 2009 that it was close to profitability, then the video site should be making Google money by this point.

But until Google confirms this there's no way to know. Given the company's reluctance to break down revenue by units, it's unlikely that Google has anything to share any time soon.