YouTube
YouTube is the video-sharing platform and social media site registered on 14 February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees. Its first video, “Me at the zoo”, was uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim on 23 April 2005; the site opened as a public beta in May 2005 and launched officially on 15 December 2005, serving more than two million views a day. Google announced it would acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock on 9 October 2006 and closed the deal on 13 November 2006, letting the platform operate independently. Advertising and the YouTube Partner Program followed in 2007, and copyright management — today anchored by the automated Content ID system — reshaped both the platform and the music and media industries. Recommendations, powered by more than 80 billion signals a day, drive more viewership than subscriptions or search, and are subject to demotion rules for borderline content introduced in 2019. By the mid-2020s YouTube was a dominant force in television streaming, with Shorts averaging around 200 billion daily views in early 2026 and YouTube advertising revenue reaching $40.4 billion in 2025.