Author: William Cantor

YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google Search. In January 2024, YouTube had more than 2.7 billion monthly active users, who collectively watched more than one billion hours of videos every day.^[7] As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute,^[8][9] and as of mid-2024, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total.^[10]

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“Me at the zoo” – YouTube’s first video, uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23rd, 2005

On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion (equivalent to $2.39 billion in 2024).^[11] Google expanded YouTube’s business model of generating revenue from advertisements alone, to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by and for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. YouTube incorporated Google’s AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved content creators. In 2023, YouTube’s advertising revenue totaled $31.7 billion, a 2% increase from the $31.1 billion reported in 2022.^[12] From Q4 2023 to Q3 2024, YouTube’s combined revenue from advertising and subscriptions exceeded $50 billion.^[13]

Since its purchase by Google, YouTube has expanded beyond the core website into mobile apps, network television, and the ability to link with other platforms. Video categories on YouTube include music videos, video clips, news, short and feature films, songs, documentaries, movie trailers, teasers, TV spots, live streams, vlogs, and more. Most content is generated by individuals, including collaborations between “YouTubers” and corporate sponsors. Established media, news, and entertainment corporations have also created and expanded their visibility to YouTube channels to reach greater audiences.

YouTube has had unprecedented social impact, influencing popular culture, internet trends, and creating multimillionaire celebrities. Despite its growth and success, the platform has been criticized for its facilitation of the spread of misinformation and copyrighted content, routinely violating its users’ privacy, excessive censorship, endangering the safety of children and their well-being, and for its inconsistent implementation of platform guidelines.

History

Main article: History of YouTube

See also: Timeline of online video

Founding and initial growth (2005–2006)

YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought by eBay.^[14] Hurley had studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.^[15]

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 remarked 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”.^[16]

Karim said the inspiration for YouTube came from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy when Janet Jackson‘s breast was briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake during the halftime show. Karim could not easily find video clips of the incident and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site.^[17][18] 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.^[16][19] They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward.^[20] Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site’s founders deciding to accept uploads of any video.^[21]

YouTube began as a venture capital–funded technology startup. Between November 2005 and April 2006, the company raised money from various investors, with Sequoia Capital and Artis Capital Management being the largest two.^[14][22] YouTube’s early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.^[23] In February 2005, the company activated www.youtube.com.^[24] The first video was uploaded on April 23, 2005. Titled “Me at the zoo“, it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and can still be viewed on the site.^[25][26] The same day, the company launched a public beta and by November, a Nike ad featuring Ronaldinho became the first video to reach one million total views.^[27][28] The site launched officially on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.^[29][30] Clips at the time were limited to 100 megabytes, as little as 30 seconds of footage.^[31]

YouTube was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet; Vimeo was launched in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor.^[32] The week of YouTube’s launch, NBCUniversal 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 establish YouTube as an important website.^[33] Unofficial uploads of the skit to YouTube drew in more than five million collective views by February 2006 before they were removed when NBCUniversal requested it two months later based on copyright concerns.^[34] Despite eventually being taken down, these duplicate uploads of the skit helped popularize YouTube’s reach and led to the upload of more third-party content.^[35][36] The site grew rapidly; 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.^[37]

The choice of the name youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, utube.com. That 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 subsequently changed its website to www.utubeonline.com.^[38][39]

“Broadcast Yourself” era (2006–2013)

On October 9, 2006, Google announced that they had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.^[40][41] The deal was finalized on November 13, 2006.^[42][43] Google’s acquisition launched newfound interest in video-sharing sites; IAC, which now owned Vimeo, focused on supporting the content creators to distinguish itself from YouTube.^[32] It is at this time YouTube issued the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”. The company experienced rapid growth. The Daily Telegraph wrote that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000.^[44] By 2010, the company had reached a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos, according to comScore.^[45] That year, the company simplified its interface to increase the time users would spend on the site.^[46] In 2011, more than three billion videos were being watched each day with 48 hours of new videos uploaded every minute.^[47][48][49] However, most of these views came from a relatively small number of videos; according to a software engineer at that time, 30% of videos accounted for 99% of views on the site.^[50] That year, the company again changed its interface and at the same time, introduced a new logo with a darker shade of red.^[51][52] A subsequent interface change, designed to unify the experience across desktop, TV, and mobile, was rolled out in 2013.^[53] By that point, more than 100 hours were being uploaded every minute, increasing to 300 hours by November 2014.^[54][55]

During that time, the company also went through some organizational changes. In October 2006, YouTube moved to a new office in San Bruno, California.^[56] Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the company in October 2010.^[57] In December 2009, YouTube partnered with Vevo.^[58] In April 2010, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” became the most-viewed video, becoming the first video to reach 200 million views on May 9, 2010.^[59]

YouTube faced a major lawsuit by Viacom International in 2011 that nearly resulted in the discontinuation of the website. The lawsuit was filed due to alleged copyright infringement of Viacom’s material by YouTube. However, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that YouTube was not liable, and thus YouTube won the case in 2012.^[60]

Susan Wojcicki’s leadership (2014–2023)

Susan Wojcicki was appointed CEO of YouTube in February 2014.^[61] In January 2016, YouTube expanded its headquarters in San Bruno by purchasing an office park for $215 million. The complex has 51,468 square metres (554,000 square feet) of space and can house up to 2,800 employees.^[62] YouTube officially launched the “polymer” redesign of its user interfaces based on Material Design language as its default, as well as a redesigned logo that is built around the service’s play button emblem in August 2017.^[63]

Through this period, YouTube tried several new ways to generate revenue beyond advertisements. In 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium, subscription-based channels.^[64][65] This effort was discontinued in January 2018 and relaunched in June, with US$4.99 channel subscriptions.^[66][67] These channel subscriptions complemented the existing Super Chat ability, launched in 2017, which allows viewers to donate between $1 and $500 to have their comment highlighted.^[68] In 2014, YouTube announced a subscription service known as “Music Key”, which bundled ad-free streaming of music content on YouTube with the existing Google Play Music service.^[69] The service continued to evolve in 2015 when YouTube announced YouTube Red, a new premium service that would offer ad-free access to all content on the platform (succeeding the Music Key service released the previous year), premium original series, and films produced by YouTube personalities, as well as background playback of content on mobile devices. YouTube also released YouTube Music, a third app oriented towards streaming and discovering the music content hosted on the YouTube platform.^[70][71][72]

The company also attempted to create products appealing to specific viewers. YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, which was designed to provide an experience optimized for children. It features a simplified user interface, curated selections of channels featuring age-appropriate content, and parental control features.^[73] Also in 2015, YouTube launched YouTube Gaming—a video gaming-oriented vertical and app for videos and live streaming, intended to compete with the Amazon.com-owned Twitch.^[74]

The company was attacked on April 3, 2018, when a shooting occurred at YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, California, which wounded four and resulted in the death of the shooter.^[75]

By February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube videos were being watched every day, and 400 hours worth of videos were uploaded every minute.^[7][76] Two years later, the uploads had risen to more than 500 hours per minute.^[8] During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world was under stay-at-home orders, usage of services like YouTube significantly increased. One data firm^[which?] estimated that YouTube was accounting for 15% of all internet traffic, twice its pre-pandemic level.^[77] In response to EU officials requesting that such services reduce bandwidth as to make sure medical entities had sufficient bandwidth to share information, YouTube and Netflix said they would reduce streaming quality for at least thirty days as to cut bandwidth use of their services by 25% to comply with the EU’s request.^[78] YouTube later announced that they would continue with this move worldwide: “We continue to work closely with governments and network operators around the globe to do our part to minimize stress on the system during this unprecedented situation.”^[79]

After a 2018 complaint alleging violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),^[80] the company was fined $170 million by the FTC for collecting personal information from minors under the age of 13.^[81] YouTube was also ordered to create systems to increase children’s privacy.^[82][83] Following criticisms of its implementation of those systems, YouTube started treating all videos designated as “made for kids” as liable under COPPA on January 6, 2020.^[84][85] Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021.^[86] Additionally, to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, YouTube released YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform.^[87]

During that period, YouTube entered disputes with other tech companies. For over a year, in 2018 and 2019, no YouTube app was available for Amazon Fire products.^[88] In 2020, Roku removed the YouTube TV app from its streaming store after the two companies were unable to reach an agreement.^[89]

After testing earlier in 2021, YouTube removed public display of dislike counts on videos in November 2021, claiming the reason for the removal was, based on its internal research, that users often used the dislike feature as a form of cyberbullying and brigading.^[90] While some users praised the move as a way to discourage trolls, others felt that hiding dislikes would make it harder for viewers to recognize clickbait or unhelpful videos and that other features already existed for creators to limit bullying. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim referred to the update as “a stupid idea”, and that the real reason behind the change was “not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed.” He felt that users’ ability on a social platform to identify harmful content was essential, saying, “The process works, and there’s a name for it: the wisdom of the crowds. The process breaks when the platform interferes with it. Then, the platform invariably declines.”^[91][92][93] Shortly after the announcement, software developer Dmitry Selivanov created Return YouTube Dislike, an open-source, third-party browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that allows users to see a video’s number of dislikes.^[94] In a letter published on January 25, 2022, by then YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, acknowledged that removing public dislike counts was a controversial decision, but reiterated that she stands by this decision, claiming that “it reduced dislike attacks.”^[95]

In 2022, YouTube launched an experiment where the company would show users who watched longer videos on TVs a long chain of short unskippable adverts, intending to consolidate all ads into the beginning of a video. Following public outrage over the unprecedented amount of unskippable ads, YouTube “ended” the experiment on September 19 of that year.^[96] In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs.^[97]

Recent history (2023–present)

On February 16, 2023, Wojcicki announced that she would step down as CEO, with Neal Mohan named as her successor. Wojcicki took on an advisory role for Google and parent company Alphabet.^[98] Wojcicki died a year and a half later from non-small-cell lung cancer, on August 9, 2024.^[99]

In late October 2023, YouTube began cracking down on the use of ad blockers on the platform. Users of ad blockers may be given a pop-up warning saying “Video player will be blocked after 3 videos”. Users of ad blockers are shown a message asking them to allow ads or inviting them to subscribe to the ad-free YouTube Premium subscription plan. YouTube says that the use of ad blockers violates its terms of service.^[100][101] In April 2024, YouTube announced it would be “strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps”.^[102] Starting in June 2024, Google Chrome announced that it would be replacing Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest V3, effectively killing support for most ad-blockers.^[103] Manifest V3 allows YouTube to inject the ads directly into the video, instead of having the ad as a separate file which can be blocked.^[104]

In September 2023, YouTube announced an in-app gaming platform called Playables. It was made accessible to all users in May 2024, expanding from an initial offering limited to premium subscribers. In December 2024, YouTube began testing a new multiplayer feature for that service, supporting multiplayer functionality across desktop and mobile devices. As of December 2024 the Playables catalog has over 130 games in various genres including trivia, action and sports.^[105][106]

In December 2024, YouTube introduced new guidelines prohibiting videos with clickbait titles to enhance content quality and combat misinformation. The platform aims to penalize creators using misleading or sensationalized titles, with potential actions including video removal or channel suspension.^[107] According to YouTube, this guideline will gradually roll out in India first, but will expand to more countries in the coming months.^[108]

On February 14, 2025, YouTube celebrated 20 years since its founding.

In April 2025, YouTube announced an expansion of its efforts to identify and manage AI-generated content that mimics the likeness of creators, artists, and influential figures. This includes detecting AI-generated faces and voices that could be used to deceive viewers. The company is also backing the NO FAKES Act, legislation aimed at addressing the misuse of AI replicas that simulate individuals’ images or voices to create harmful content.^[109]

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Source: Wikipedia “YouTube“. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License; additional terms may apply.