YouTube Launched
YouTube went online, transforming how the world shares and watches video
February 14, 2005
Three Former Employees Change Video Forever
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the online payment company PayPal. The idea reportedly grew out of frustration with how difficult it was to share video clips online. The site went into public beta in May 2005, and the first video ever uploaded was an 18-second clip of Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, titled "Me at the zoo." It was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and as of today remains publicly available on the platform. By the end of 2005, the site was attracting millions of visitors each month.
Google Buys a Phenomenon
YouTube's growth was explosive. In July 2006, the company announced that over 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. Google recognized the platform's potential and acquired YouTube in October 2006 for approximately $1.65 billion in stock, one of the largest technology acquisitions at the time. Google's infrastructure and resources helped YouTube scale to meet its rapidly growing demand. The platform navigated significant challenges around copyright infringement, eventually developing the Content ID system that allowed rights holders to identify and monetize their material.
A Platform That Reshaped Media
YouTube fundamentally changed how people consume and create media. It gave ordinary individuals the ability to reach a global audience without a television network or record label. It created an entirely new category of celebrity, the YouTube creator, and a whole economy built around advertising revenue sharing. Today, more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and the platform has over 2 billion logged-in users monthly. YouTube has also become the world's second-largest search engine after Google. It changed music, news, education, and entertainment in ways that were impossible to predict from that brief clip of a young man standing in front of elephants.