The Business Insider says it's just a matter of time before Internet juggernaut YouTube is forced to either radically change its profit model, or close shop altogether. That's bad news for people who enjoy watching videos of couch-potato Americans lipsynching to Euro-pop tunes.

I kid. While YouTube has plenty of garbage, it also hosts an awful lot of excellent content, as well -- everything from debates to documentaries to eyewitness journalism. If YouTube were to go out of business, everyone would lose.

Nevertheless, the numbers are not encouraging:

Despite massive growth, ubiquitous global brand awareness, presidential endorsement, and the world’s greatest repository of illegally-pirated video content, Google’s massive video folly is on life-support, and the prognosis is grave....

The problem lies with the bean-counters. According to a report by Credit Suisse, YouTube is on track to lose roughly $470 million in 2009. No matter Google’s $116 billion market cap: a half-billion dollar loss on a single property, even one as large as YouTube, is a bitter pill to swallow...

Credit Suisse estimates YouTube will manage to rake in about $240 million in ad revenue in 2009, against operating costs of roughly $711 million, leading to a shortfall of just over $470 million. This half-billion dollar loss comes after more than a year of feverish experimentation in various forms of advertising, cross-product embedding, licensing and partnership deals. YouTube is adamant that ultimately they’ll find an advertising solution that will enable the ungainly behemoth to reach profitability. Looking at the math, it doesn’t seem likely.