Eric Schmidt: Google Has Secret Plan To Mint Money With YouTube (GOOG)

CNBC is hyping a Eric Schmidt/Maria Bartiromo interview that airs today at 4pm, but they're already released the transcript from the chat, taped yesterday.

Predictably, there are no shockers: Eric stays on message about Google's growth opportunities, costs, etc. He says the DoubleClick integration will take about six months. And he says he doesn't have any idea what will happen with Microsoft-Yahoo, but sure hopes Steve Ballmer doesn't get his way. Etc.

Most interesting to us: His allusion to new, previously undisclosed plans to extract money out of YouTube, which cost Google (GOOG) $1.65 billion in 2006 but hasn't generated more than a trickle of cash to date:

BARTIROMO: Which is a huge priority, clearly. A lot of people feel like this is an amazing opportunity for you. So, as far as monetizing that business on YouTube, do you think that takes a year? Does it take the next five years? What's your time frame on that?

Dr. SCHMIDT: We believe the best products are coming out this year. And they're new products. They're not announced. They're not just putting in-line ads in the things that people are trying. But we have a number--and, of course, Google is an innovative place. The Yahoo! team are trying various new forms of advertising, ones which are much more participative, much more creative, much more--much more interesting in and of themselves. Google believes that advertising itself has value. The ads literally are valuable to consumers. Not just to the advertisers, but the consumers.