YouTube may be Google's most potent weapon against Facebook

In its battle with Facebook for consumers' attention and advertisers' dollars, Google may have a not-so-secret weapon — YouTube. 

Collectively, US consumers already spend more time on YouTube than they do on Facebook, Brian Wieser, a financial analyst with Pivotal Research Group, reported in a research note Tuesday. And that gap seems likely to grow — while Facebook members are spending less time on the social network, people are spending more time watching YouTube videos, Wieser noted. 

"Given YouTube's relative scale ... ongoing growth at these levels is a notable trend for the industry," Wieser said.

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