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Three former Paypal; Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim activated the internet domain site "youtube.com" and created a website to share videos on, though the website was still only in beta.
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The first ever video that was uploaded onto youtube was a video called "Me at the zoo" and was filmed by co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego zoo in California.
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In September 2005, Youtube got its first one-million hit on a video. The video was a Nike ad that went viral involving Brazilian soccer player Ronaldinho receiving his pair of golden boots
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In November 2005, YouTube received funding from Sequoia Capital. In December, YouTube officially became a corporation. Though the site was still in beta, Youtube had officially became a corporation. The first office was located above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.
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Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November 2005, YouTube was able to increase its bandwidth, improve its servers, and launch to the public.
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In February 2006, NBC asked YouTube to pull a clip from Saturday Night Live called "Lazy Sunday," which ended up attracting a lot of attention to the video-sharing site. YouTube complied and in October 2007, it launched its Content Verification Program to help content owners like NBC locate and remove video that infringes on their copyrights.
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During the summer of 2006 youtube gained popularity quickly and rapidly
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A survey that was done on July 16, 2006 showed that Youtube was outpacing many websites including Ebaum's world, myspace, AOL, etc. and as many as 65,000 videos were being uploaded at that time, and gaining 100 million video clips were being viewed.
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On October 9, 2006 Google bought Youtube for $1.65 billion USD in stock. The purchase between Google and Youtube came after Youtube's 3 agreements with media companies in attempt to escape copyright-infringement laws.
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From March 18 - March 23 in 2007 Youtube had created a ceremony that had the Youtube community vote on different videos for different categories such as adorable, comedy, inspirational, instructional, etc. and is held every year.
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YouTube launched its Partner Program to let people get paid for their viral content in May 2007. This was the first time YouTube made it possible for everyday people to turn their hobbies into a business. About a year later, the most successful users were earning six-figure incomes from YouTube, The New York Times reported in 2008.
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This 56-second viral video of a toddler biting his brother's finger and then smiling is one of the most watched YouTube clips ever. At the time of publication, the video has half a billion views. As of February 2012, the family behind the video had made more than $150,000.
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CNN and Youtube televised presidential debates on July 23 and November 28 of 2007. Democratic and Republican nominees were asked a series of questions that were submitted via youtube.
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Google decided it was time to start making money and rolled out the first ads for YouTube in August 2007. The first advertisements were semi-transparent banners that popped up on the lower 20% of videos. The overlaid ads would appear about 10 to 15 seconds into the video. It was Google's first response to questions about how the search giant would make money from its video site.
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In 2008 youtube was awarded with the Peabody Award and cited for being a speakers corner that both embodies and pramotes democracy
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In November of 2008 Youtube reached and agreement with MGM, Lionsgate, and CBS, and allowed youtube to post full-length films and television episodes on the site.
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In early 2009 youtube registered the domain "youtube-nocookie.com" for videos embedded on Unoted States federal government websites.
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In April 2009, Usher introduced the world to Justin Bieber via a video on YouTube. Usher also announced that Bieber signed a recording contract with Island Def Jam records. Now, Justin Bieber's Baby is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube, with more than 820 million views.
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In December of 2009 Entertainment Weekly placed youtube on its end of the decade "best of" list, describing it as "providing a safe home for piano playing cats, celeb goof-ups and over-zealous lip synchers since 2005."
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In early January 2010 Youtube introduced an online film rental service, which is currently available only to users in the US, canada, and the UK. The service offers over 6,000 films.
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On March 31, 2010 youtube created a new design for the website stating that "they wanted to get rid of the clutter."
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May of 2010 it was reported that youtube gained more than 2 billion videos a day which is nearly double the prime-time audience of all 3 major US television networks combined.
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According to data published by market research company comScore, Youtube was the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of roughly 43% and more than 14 billion views viewed during May.
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Chad Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of youtube to take an advisory role, and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head.
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Alexa internet ranked Youtube as the third most visted website behind Google, and Facebook.
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Google+ social networking site was directly integrated directly with youtube and the chrome web browser, allowing youtube videos to be viewed from within Google+ interface.
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Youtube has said that roughly 60 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the United States. The site has eight hundred million unique users a month.
