YouTube has had a pioneering role in the Internet’s video revolution.
As profiled in a recent celebratory piece by SFGATE, YouTube has demonstrated in its first decade of existence that media hubs can be built around free content supplied by an Internet service’s users.
YouTube’s success culminated in 2006 when it sold for $1.76 billion to Google Inc. Co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, collectively received nearly $700 million in Google stock.
Here are a few moments to remember from its first decade:
- 2005 Nike soccer shoe ad called “Touch of Gold” became first video on the site to be watched 1 million times.
- 2012 “Gangnam Style” became first YouTube video to surpass 1 billion views.
- In 2007, six hours of video footage was being transferred to YouTube every minute but now 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube each minute, or about 432,000 hours per day.
Most TV and movie executives initially despised YouTube due to their lax controls against video pirates posting copyrighted clips and a copyright lawsuit was filed against them. YouTube denied wrongdoing and pointed to their policy of removing pirated video whenever asked by a copyright holder. After being bought by Google, YouTube built an automated system that prevents most unauthorized clips from appearing on its site.
Google has never disclosed how much money YouTube brings in or if it’s profitable. Research firm eMarketer projects that YouTube will sell about $4.3 billion in advertising this year, after subtracting commissions and licensing fees. This translates to 7% of Google’s projected revenue of $60 billion this year after subtracting advertising commissions.
