YouTube

Also known as youtu.be, www.youtube.com, Youtube.com, YouTube.com

YouTube is an American online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, who were former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in San Bruno, California, it is the second-most-visited website in the world, after Google itself. In January 2024, YouTube had reached more than 2.7billion monthly active users, who collectively consumed more than one billion hours of video content every day. , videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and , there were approximately

AI overview

YouTube is an American video-sharing website where people can upload, watch, and share videos with a global audience of billions of users. Founded in 2005 and now owned by Google, it has become one of the world's most-visited websites, with people watching over one billion hours of content daily.

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Key facts

Website.name: YouTube
Website.logo_caption: Logo used since February 2025
Website.screenshot: File:Youtube interface, showing search results of Burger Recipe.png
Website.screenshot_size: 280px
Website.caption: YouTube search results, May 2025
Website.company_type: Subsidiary
Website.type: Online video platform, social media platform
Website.location: 901 Cherry AvenueSan Bruno, California
Website.country: United States
Website.area_served

~40 min read

Article

41 sections

Contents

<span class="anchor" id="Company history"></span><span class="anchor" id="Website history"></span> History
Founding and initial growth (2005–2006)
"Broadcast Yourself" era (2006–2013)
Susan Wojcicki's leadership (2014–2023)
Neal Mohan leadership (2023–present)
Senior leadership
Features
Videos
Copyright issues
Content ID
Russia
April Fools gags
Services
YouTube Premium
YouTube Kids
YouTube Music
YouTube Movies & TV
YouTube Primetime Channels
YouTube TV
YouTube Go
YouTube Shorts
YouTube Stories
YouTube VR
Playables
Automatic language dubbing
Criticism and controversies
Privacy concerns
Censorship and bans
State censorship of YouTube content
Bans by YouTube
Social impact
Finances
Partnership with corporations
2017 advertiser boycott
YouTuber earnings
Revenue to copyright holders
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links

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

On November 13, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for 1.65 billion USD (equivalent to $2.44 billion in 2025). Google expanded YouTube's business model from generating revenue through advertisements alone to paid offerings such as movies and exclusive programming explicitly produced for YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching videos without ads. YouTube incorporated the Google AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved users. In 2023, YouTube's advertising revenue totaled $31.7 billion, a 2% increase from the $31.1 billion reported in 2022. From Q4 2023 to Q3 2024, YouTube's combined revenue from advertising and subscriptions exceeded $50 billion.