YouTube has taken its first tentative steps into the movie rental business and confirmed rumors that have been circulating for some time.

Google’s video sharing site, YouTube, is currently sponsoring the Sundance Film Festival. Yesterday, the YouTube team announced that starting tomorrow, titles from Sundance 2010 and Sundance 2009 would be available for rent for U.S. Youtube users.

While there are only five titles on the bill (including “One Too Many Mornings,” “Homewrecker,” and “Children of Invention”), and these are only available for rent through Sunday, January 31, the YouTube team says a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead.

“These are early days and in the coming weeks we’ll also invite a small group of partners across other industries, in addition to independent film, to participate in this new option. Anything that brings more content to the YouTube community is a good thing.”

In addition to all of this, YouTube is putting out the call for more independent filmmakers to join the rental program as part of their “Filmmakers Wanted” campaign at the festival.

It’s not yet clear if this kind of move will eventually spread to include titles from Hollywood studios. Certainly there’s nothing of the sort hinted at in the post but wouldn’t it be nice, eh?

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Web video site YouTube will be profitable for Google Inc in the near future, the Internet search leader said on Thursday.

Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006, but has lost money on the site that lets people post and share videos free. Analysts have raised concerns about the huge costs involved in streaming millions of videos with only a tiny swathe of them being supported by advertising. “YouTube is now on a trajectory that we’re very pleased with,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said during an earnings call on Thursday. He added that Google is helping marketers and advertising agencies create “great ads easily” for YouTube. Google executives have recently made bullish remarks on YouTube’s revenue growth. Schmidt told reporters at the Sun Valley technology and media conference this month that new advertising formats, such as pre-roll ads that appear before a Web video program, will draw in more revenue. On Thursday, Google’s head of product management and marketing, Jonathan Rosenberg, said “monetized views” – people viewing videos that are supported by advertising – more than tripled in the past year. “We’re now monetizing billions of views of partner videos every month,” he said. In response to an analyst question, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette said recent efforts to introduce new ad formats and promote videos have helped to establish YouTube’s home page among advertisers as relevant and “desirable for customers.” “We’re really pleased both in terms of (YouTube’s) revenue growth, which is really material to YouTube, and… in the not long, too-long-distant future, we actually see a very profitable and good business for us,” Pichette said.

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