Hulu Still Growing, YouTube Still Boss (GOOG)

Google's (GOOG) YouTube is still dominating the U.S. Web video market, taking half of the industry's incremental growth in December, according to comScore. Meanwhile, Web TV site Hulu is still growing, but slower than the overall market. And some of the site's impressive viewership metrics are slipping.

Overall, the industry grew 13% in December to 14.3 billion videos.

Google (mostly YouTube) served up 5.9 billion videos in the U.S. in December for a 41.2% market share, according to comScore. That's up 16% from 5.1 billion videos in November, which was a 40.3% market share. Unique viewers grew 2.2% to 100.1 million.

Meanwhile, no. 7 Hulu -- a joint venture of News Corp. (NWS) and NBC (GE) -- served up 241 million videos in December, representing 1.7% market share. That's 6% growth in videos served from November, but its market share slipped from 1.8%, according to comScore. Unique viewers grew 9.4% to 24.6 million.

Hulu watchers viewed an average 9.8 videos in December, down 3% from 10.1 in November. And the average Hulu video's duration slipped to 10.1 minutes in December, down 15% from 11.9 minutes in November.

Big deal? Not necessarily. Hulu videos still watch the longest videos, on average, of any site in comScore's top ten. (And comScore's numbers are one estimate from a single source -- not gospel.)

Hulu is also likely doing a much better job making money from its premium videos than Google makes from YouTube. Which explains some of YouTube's new initiatives to put more premium content on the site, such as a deal with Hollywood's William Morris Agency.

On February 28, Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, joined 31 other media groups and filed a $2.3 billion suit against Google in Dutch court, alleging losses suffered due to the company's advertising practices.