According to Needham, an investment bank, YouTube will bring in $2.5billion in advertising revenue in 2013, but that is not enough to move the needle at Google, or to make it a worthwhile outlet for content companies.

My comments:

Here it means that the $2.5 billion YouTube brings in advert revenue means little to Google.

Needle refers to the needle of any measurement instrument, such as a weighing machine.

Before you step on a digital weighing machine, for example, you’ll see the scale’s needle pointing toward 0. You step onto it and its needle moves and soon settles at, say, 85. 85 kilos, that is. That’ll be your body weight.

Now, realizing you’ve got two heavy boots on, you remove the boots and step on the scale again. This time the needle moves down a little to, say, 83.5 kilos.

You’ve been wishing to lose weight and so understandably always prefer to weigh less. So you remove your shirt also. But this time the needle hardly moves at all….

See the point? If the needle doesn’t move, it shows what you’ve added to or removed from the scale is too small in quantity to make a difference.

Again, in our example, $2.5 billion is a lot of money to most companies, but not to Google, a money making behemoth.

Here, it makes no significant difference.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin（张欣） has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.