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YouTube history
YouTube company history timeline
YouTube, Web site for sharing videos. It was registered on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three former employees of the American e-commerce company PayPal.
The first video was uploaded April 23, 2005.
Shortly after the site opened on a limited (“beta”) basis in May 2005, it was attracting some 30,000 visitors per day.
The site launched officially on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.
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.
The number of videos available at the site surpassed 25 million in March 2006, with more than 20,000 new videos uploaded on a daily basis.
On October 9, 2006, Google announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock.
In October 2006, YouTube moved to a new office in San Bruno, California.
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.
Wojcicki’s responsibilities greatly increased in 2008 with Google’s acquisition of the company DoubleClick.
In December 2009, YouTube partnered with Vevo.
Google kept pace with the rapid proliferation of smartphones when Wojcicki arranged for the purchase of the mobile advertising network AdMob in 2009.
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.
Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as a 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.
By 2010, the company had reached a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos, according to comScore.
In 2011, more than three billion videos were being watched each day with 48 hours of new videos uploaded every minute.
In 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium, subscription-based channels within the platform.
Susan Wojcicki was appointed CEO of YouTube in February 2014.
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.
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.
YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, designed to provide an experience optimized for children.
In January 2016, YouTube expanded its headquarters in San Bruno by purchasing an office park for $215 million.
By February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube were watched every day, and 400 hours of video were uploaded every minute.
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.
Following a 2018 complaint alleging violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the company was fined $170 million by the FTC for collecting personal information from minors under the age of 13.
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.
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.
Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021.
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YouTube competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | $5.1B | 3,900 | 23 | |
| Tumblr | 2007 | $84.0M | 2,437 | - |
| SoundCloud | 2007 | $18.1M | 1,829 | 11 |
| TikTok | 2016 | $450.0M | 8,424 | 976 |
| 2010 | $86.0B | 18,967 | 1 | |
| IGN | 1996 | $95.0M | 250 | 12 |
| wikiHow | 2005 | $16.0M | 249 | - |
| Today's Business | 2011 | $4.9M | 59 | - |
| Endeavor Streaming | 2004 | $55.5M | 750 | - |
| Maker | 2011 | $370.0M | 40,800 | 17 |
YouTube history FAQs
Zippia gives an in-depth look into the details of YouTube, including salaries, political affiliations, employee data, and more, in order to inform job seekers about YouTube. The employee data is based on information from people who have self-reported their past or current employments at YouTube. The data on this page is also based on data sources collected from public and open data sources on the Internet and other locations, as well as proprietary data we licensed from other companies. Sources of data may include, but are not limited to, the BLS, company filings, estimates based on those filings, H1B filings, and other public and private datasets. While we have made attempts to ensure that the information displayed are correct, Zippia is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of this information. None of the information on this page has been provided or approved by YouTube. The data presented on this page does not represent the view of YouTube and its employees or that of Zippia.
YouTube may also be known as or be related to YouTube, YouTube, LLC and Youtube.