YouTube is an American online video-sharing platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. Three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—created the service in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google’s subsidiaries.
Type of business | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Type of site | Video hosting service |
| Founded | February 14, 2005; 15 years ago |
| Headquarters | 901 Cherry Avenue San Bruno, California, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide (excluding blocked countries) |
| Founder(s) | Chad HurleySteve ChenJawed Karim |
| Key people | Susan Wojcicki (CEO) |
| Industry | InternetVideo hosting service |
| Products | YouTube Premium YouTube Music YouTube TV |
| Revenue | US$15 billion (2019)[1] |
| Parent | Google LLC (2006–present) |
| URL | YouTube.com (see list of localized domain names) |
| Alexa rank |  2 (Global, January 2020)[2] |
| Advertising | Google AdSense |
| Launched | February 14, 2005; 15 years ago |
| Current status | Active |
| Content license | Uploader holds copyright (standard license); Creative Commons can be selected. |
| Written in | Python (core/API),[3] C (through CPython), C++, Java (through Guice platform),[ 4][5] Go,[6] JavaScript (UI) |
History of YouTube
YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.[12] Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[13]
Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson‘s role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.[14] Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.[15][16] Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site’s founders deciding to accept uploads of any type of video.[17]
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen’s apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, but Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party “was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible”.[15]The YouTube logo used from its launch until 2011. Another version of this logo without their “Broadcast Yourself” slogan was used until 2015.
YouTube began as a venture capital–funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital and an $8 million investment from Artis Capital Management between November 2005 and April 2006.[18][19] YouTube’s early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.[20] The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.[21] The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.[22] The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.[23] YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005.[24][25] Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site launched officially on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.[26][27]
At the time of the official launch, YouTube did not have much market recognition. It was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet, as Vimeo was launched in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor at the time and did not grow much either.[28] The week of YouTube’s launch, NBC-Universal’s Saturday Night Live ran a skit “Lazy Sunday” by The Lonely Island. Besides helping to bolster ratings and long-term viewership for Saturday Night Live, “Lazy Sunday”‘s status as an early viral video helped established YouTube as an important website.[29] Unofficial uploads of the skit to YouTube drew in more than five million collective views by February 2006 before they were removed at request of NBC-Universal about two months later, raising questions of copyright related to viral content.[30] Despite eventually being taken down, these duplicate uploads of the skit helped popularize YouTube’s reach and led to the upload of further third-party content.[31][32] The site grew rapidly and, in July 2006, the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day.[33]
The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, www.utube.com. The site’s owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www.utubeonline.com.[34][35]
Acquisition by Google (2006–2013)
On October 9, 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock,[36][37] and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.[38][39] Google’s acquisition of YouTube launched a newfound interest in video-sharing sites; IAC which now owned Vimeo after acquiring CollegeHumor, used its asset to develop a competing site to YouTube, though focused on supporting the content creator to distinguish itself from YouTube.[28]YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California
In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event.[40] On March 31, 2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented: “We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter.”[41] In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two billion times per day.[42][43][44] This increased to three billion in May 2011,[45][46][47] and four billion in January 2012.[48][49] In February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day.[50][51][52]
According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos in May 2010.[53]
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