London's Independent has taken a shining to Google's YouTube. A story in today's issue covers the company's sparse beginnings over a pizzeria in San Mateo, how within 18 months it was sold to Google for $1.76 billion, and how it continues to be a traffic driver, with 345 million monthly users -- enough to make it the third-most popular site on the Internet.

But the reason that the San Bruno-based company got so much ink from the Brits is the combination of its astounding debt and no clear recipe to alter its financial fortunes.

We gave you the numbers about three weeks ago: a projected $470 million in operating losses as estimated by Credit Suisse, and a slightly less daunting estimate of $174 million by local consultants RampRate Inc. Says the Independent:

Google aren't rushing to put an end to speculation over the scale of the debt. One thing is abundantly clear from both studies: Google isn't making money by letting everyone and their aunt share videos with each other for free. And the news last week that founder Steve Chen was leaving YouTube to work on other projects at Google kicked off another flurry of rumours as to its possible fate.

It's not all gloom and doom. YouTube is in line for $240 million worth of revenue from advertising, but that's more than offset by hardware costs and licensing fees for premium content from copyright holders. There's also the cost for the bandwidth it takes to handle 20 hours of uploaded video clips every minute, which runs anywhere from $83 million to $380 million, depending on which report you believe.

Still, there are those who believe that the picture of this indebted existence is essentially a big hoax, geared toward reducing the aforementioned licensing fees, while the site infrastructure helps Google in multiple ways. "In the new, topsy-turvy world of online economics," writes the Independent, "it seems astonishing that losses on paper have actually made YouTube a more powerful online force."

There's also the notion that Internet users -- particularly young ones -- expect free content. On this, YouTube delivers, with a dearth of intrusive advertising found on many of its competitors. YouTube can keep this up because Google's bankroll allows it to. It might be a sign, says the article, that this is an arena in which only the biggest companies can survive; forget the quaint notions of individual spirit and entrepreneurism.

Analyst Keith McMahon likened it to the first days of the home computer, when kids coded games and sold them on cassette. "But from that," he said, "rose a gaming industry that's controlled by a small number of very wealthy organizations. Cottage industries that can't survive on their own will either fail, or get swallowed up."

Here's where it all started: YouTube's first-ever clip, from April, 2005. It's 19 seconds' worth of company co-founder Jawed Karim at San Diego zoo. Key quote: "The cool thing about these guys is that they have really long trunks."