YouTube is like Agent Smith in the Matrix: More, more, more

TV is moving to the web, and no company is benefitting more from this than Google.

According to Nielsen’s August 2012 statistics for the U.S., YouTube alone had more than triple the unique visitors of any other site, more than 25 times the number of video streams than its nearest competitor, and more time per viewer than any service other than Netflix.

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It’s really not a competition.

This mirrors the results from ComScore’s July 2012 results in some ways, in which Google held a 3-to-1 advantage over nearest competitor Facebook in terms of unique video viewers (156 million to 53 million). But Nielsen’s methodologies and numbers differ from  ComScore’s, and in Nielsen’s numbers for this month, Facebook trails Google unique visitors by almost 6-to-1: 138 million to 25 million.

(VentureBeat has reached out to Nielsen for comment, and we’ll update this story as we get an answer.)

TV is moving online, as we covered recently, especially via game consoles like the Xbox 360, set-top boxes, and smart TVs. Viewers on those platforms watch far more minutes than viewers on phones, PCs, or even tablets, and that’s where both Hulu and especially Netflix see the majority of their minutes.

Other data from Nielsen show that Netflix remains the queen of engagement, with viewers watching an average of 10.5 of Netflix content each month, compared to not quite five hours for YouTube, and 4.5 for Hulu.

One brand that shows consistent viewership between both the Nielsen and ComScore ratings is VEVO, with something like 45 million unique visitors a month to its music videos.

But the most obvious finding?

Anyone who wants to catch YouTube has their work cut out for them.

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photo credit: The Matrix Reloaded