Many people nowadays use Google to search for any word and YouTube to find a video. We know that Google owns but is not the founder of YouTube. Three former PayPal employees who worked with Elon Musk at the time of YouTube’s founder. Founded for people to share their amateur videos and find such videos, YouTube has become an industry on its own today.
In fact, the founding story of YouTube has a similar story with many of today’s digital giant companies. Enthusiastic and visionary young people make a breakthrough, rise quickly and sell the business at a great profit. But there were many difficulties not in the founding of YouTube, but in its rise. Because copyright problems were causing trouble for managers then, as they do today. Let’s take a closer look at the founding story of YouTube.
Where are these people going to post videos?
Many of the people who have worked at PayPal, which was founded by Elon Musk in 1998 and introduced a brand new digital payment method to the world, are the names that shape today’s digital world. The names who founded YouTube were also three former PayPal employees.
Three PayPal employees, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, quit their jobs to pursue other dreams. The trio wanted to create a new platform, but were undecided. During a dinner together, they realized that it was not an easily accessible platform for people to share their amateur videos.
They started working within the scope of this idea and started the necessary official actions by finding the name YouTube, which means ‘your television’. A short time later, the infrastructure of the platform was ready. The YouTube beta version was released in May 2005 in San Bruno, California, United States. On December 15, 2005, YouTube was officially launched.
YouTube is getting unimaginable attention:
As soon as the YouTube beta went live, it started attracting more than 30,000 daily visitors. When it was officially released, it was getting 2 million views per day. By January 2006, the number of videos on YouTube had exceeded 25 million and more than 2,000 videos were uploaded every day. In the summer of 2006, there were more than 100 million videos on the platform and the upload speed did not seem to decrease at all.
One of the first videos uploaded to YouTube belongs to Jawed Karim, one of the founders of the platform. The video with the title ‘Me at the zoo’ was uploaded on April 23, 2005 by the account with the username jawed. In the video we see Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. Even this allows us to clearly see what purpose YouTube was founded for.
This scale does not weigh this weight:
YouTube’s astonishing success may seem worthy of celebration to many, but such massive broadcasting power was lacking in a startup. Every new video means; it meant a new server, new hardware, a stronger internet network. Moreover, numerous lawsuits came one after another, as many copyrighted content was shared in the videos.
Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim were not alone. Roelof Botha, also a former PayPal employee, joined YouTube’s board of directors and received millions of dollars in investment from Sequoia Capital. Business was growing. However, this scale was not pulling this weight. It was time to hand the game over to a much bigger player.
Google buys YouTube:
At a similar time to YouTube, Google opened a platform called Google Video. But it wasn’t very successful. When this was the case, YouTube and Google sat on the table. As a result, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in November 2006. But they had a lot of problems to deal with.
First of all, Google started to set up a much broader infrastructure for YouTube. The platform, which does not offer any income to its owner, has been integrated with Google services and the advertising system has been developed. Viral video sharing of large companies such as MGM and Nike has accelerated on the platform. The system slowly settled down.
Of course, the biggest problem was copyright. Successive copyright lawsuits were troubling Google as well as YouTube. A large army of software developers and lawyers was mobilized. Tens of thousands of videos have been removed from the platform. It has been decided that some will continue to be broadcast with a copyright notice. The issues have been largely fixed thanks to significant deals with some music companies.
YouTube today:
YouTube, the digital video sharing platform founded by three enthusiastic young men, is watched by more than 4 billion hours of video a month, and about 500 hours of new videos are uploaded to the platform every minute. YouTube is estimated to be worth more than $100 billion. Google’s annual revenue through the platform is thought to be more than $15 billion.
Let’s face it, even if it’s filled with a thousand bullshit, YouTube has radically changed the way we all watch. He created a new profession called YouTuber. It helped us meet unique videos and the people who made those videos. So YouTube, founded by three enthusiastic young men, is fueling the enthusiasm of billions of young people today.
Today, we answered questions such as who and when YouTube was founded, which is at the center of our watching habits, and we talked about the details you need to know about the purpose of this platform. You can share your thoughts about YouTube in the comments.
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