YouTube

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YouTube, LLC

The file above's purpose is being discussed and/or is being considered for deletion. See files for discussion to help reach a

consensus on what to do.

Type of Subsidiary

business

Type of site Video hosting service

Founded February 14, 2005; 13 years ago

Headquarter 901 Cherry Avenue

s San Bruno, California, United States

Coordinates 37°37′41″N 122°25′35″WCoordinates: 37°37′41″N 122°25′35″W

Area served Worldwide (except blocked countries)

Owner Alphabet Inc.

 Founder(s) Steve Chen

 Chad Hurley

 Jawed Karim

CEO Susan Wojcicki

Industry Internet

Video hosting service

Parent Google (2006–present)

Website YouTube.com

(see list of localized domain names)

Alexa rank 2 (Global, January 2018)[1]

Advertising Google AdSense

Registration Optional (not required to watch most videos; required for certain tasks such as uploading videos,

viewing flagged (18+) videos, creating playlists, liking or disliking videos and posting

comments)

Launched February 14, 2005; 13 years ago

Current stat Active

us

Content Uploader holds copyright (standard license); Creative Commons can be selected.
license

Written in Python (core/API),[2] C (through CPython), C++, Java (through Guiceplatform),[3][4] Go,[5] JavaScri

pt (UI)

YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California.

The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen,
and Jawed Karim—in February 2005. Google bought the site in November 2006 for
US$1.65 billion; YouTube now operates as one of Google's subsidiaries.
YouTube allows users to upload, view, rate, share, add to favorites, report, comment
on videos, and subscribe to other users. It offers a wide variety of user-
generated and corporate media videos. Available content includes video clips, TV
show clips, music videos, short and documentary films, audio recordings, movie
trailers, live streams, and other content such as video blogging, short original videos,
and educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube is uploaded by individuals, but
media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo, and Hulu offer some of their material via
YouTube as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can only watch
videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of
videos and add comments to videos. Videos deemed potentially inappropriate are available
only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old.
YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads
according to site content and audience. The vast majority of its videos are free to view, but
there are exceptions, including subscription-based premium channels, film rentals, as well
 as YouTube Premium, a subscription service offering ad-free access to the website and
access to exclusive content made in partnership with existing users.
As of February 2017, there are more than 400 hours of content uploaded to YouTube each
minute, and one billion hours of content are watched on YouTube every day. As of
August 2017, the website is ranked as the second-most popular site in the world by Alexa
Internet, a web traffic analysis company.[1]

Contents
[hide]

 1Company history
 2Features
o 2.1Video technology
 2.1.1Playback
 2.1.2Uploading
 2.1.3Quality and formats
 2.1.4Live streaming
 2.1.53D videos
 2.1.6360-degree videos
o 2.2User features
 2.2.1Community
o 2.3Content accessibility
 2.3.1Platforms
o 2.4Localization
o 2.5YouTube Premium
o 2.6YouTube TV
o 2.7YouTube Go
o 2.8ISNI
o 2.9April Fools
 3Social impact
o 3.1Promotion of conspiracy theories and fringe discourse
 4Revenue
o 4.1Advertisement partnerships
o 4.2Partnership with video creators
o 4.3Revenue to copyright holders
 5Community policy
o 5.1Copyrighted material
 5.1.1Content ID
o 5.2Controversial content
 5.2.1Child protection
o 5.3User comments
o 5.4View counts
 6Censorship and filtering
 7See also
 8References
o 8.1Notes
o 8.2Further reading
 9External links

Company history
Main article: History of YouTube
From left to right: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early
employees of PayPal.[6] Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania,
and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign.[7] According to a story that has often been repeated in the media,
Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after
they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at
Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had
occurred, but Chen commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner
party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was
very digestible".[8]
Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the
2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later
from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event
online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.[9] Hurley and Chen said that the original
idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced
by the website Hot or Not.[8][10]

The YouTube logo from launch until 2011, featuring its former slogan Broadcast Yourself

YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an

$11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April
2006.[11] YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese
restaurant in San Mateo, California.[12] The domain name www.youtube.com was activated
on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months.[13] The
first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego
Zoo.[14] The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the
site.[15] YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to
reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November
2005.[16][17] Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site
launched officially on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million
views a day.[18][19] The site grew rapidly and, in July 2006, the company announced that
more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was
receiving 100 million video views per day.[20] According to data published by market
research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the
United States, with a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos
in May 2010.[21]
In May 2011, 48 hours of new videos were uploaded to the site every minute,[22] which
increased to 60 hours every minute in January 2012,[22] 100 hours every minute in May
2013,[23][24] 300 hours every minute in November 2014,[25] and 400 hours every minute in
February 2017.[26][27] As of January 2012, the site had 800 million unique users a month.[28] It
is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in
2000.[29] According to third-party web analytics providers, Alexa and SimilarWeb, YouTube
is the second-most visited website in the world, as of December 2016; SimilarWeb also lists
YouTube as the top TV and video website globally, attracting more than 15 billion visitors
per month.[1][30][31] In October 2006, YouTube moved to a new office in San Bruno,
California.[32]
The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named
website, www.utube.com . The site's owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a
lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people
looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website
to www.utubeonline.com .[33][34] In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had
acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock,[35][36] and the deal was finalized on
November 13, 2006.[37][38]

YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno, California

In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, including 60 cricket
matches of the Indian Premier League. According to YouTube, this was the first worldwide
free online broadcast of a major sporting event.[39] On March 31, 2010, the YouTube
website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface and increasing the
time users spend on the site. Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented: "We
really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter."[40] In May 2010, YouTube
videos were watched more than two billion times per day.[41][42][43] This increased to three
billion in May 2011,[44][45][46] and four billion in January 2012.[22][47] In February 2017, one billion
hours of YouTube was watched every day.[48][49][50]
In October 2010, 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 of the company.[51] In April 2011, James Zern, a YouTube software engineer, revealed
that 30% of videos accounted for 99% of views on the site.[52] In November 2011,
the Google+ social networking site was integrated directly with YouTube and
the Chrome web browser, allowing YouTube videos to be viewed from within the Google+
interface.[53]

YouTube logo from 2015 until 2017

In December 2011, YouTube launched a new version of the site interface, with the video
channels displayed in a central column on the home page, similar to the news feeds of
social networking sites.[54] At the same time, a new version of the YouTube logo was
introduced with a darker shade of red, the first change in design since October 2006.[55] In
May 2013, YouTube launched a pilot program for content providers to offer premium,
subscription-based channels within the platform.[56][57] In February 2014, Susan Wojcicki was
appointed CEO of YouTube.[58] In November 2014, YouTube announced a subscription
service known as "Music Key", which bundled ad-free streaming of music content on
YouTube with the existing Google Play Music service.[59]
In February 2015, YouTube released a secondary mobile app known as YouTube Kids.
The app is designed to provide an experience optimized for children. It features a simplified
user interface, curated selections of channels featuring age-appropriate content, and
parental control features.[60] Later on August 26, 2015, YouTube launched YouTube
Gaming—a video gaming-oriented vertical and app for videos and live streaming, intended
to compete with the Amazon.com-owned Twitch.[61]
In October 2015, YouTube announced YouTube Red, a new premium service that would
offer ad-free access to all content on the platform (succeeding the Music Key service
released the previous year), premium original series and films produced by YouTube
personalities, as well as background playback of content on mobile devices. YouTube also
released YouTube Music, a third app oriented towards streaming and discovering the
music content hosted on the YouTube platform.[62][63][64]
In January 2016, YouTube expanded its headquarters in San Bruno by purchasing an
office park for $215 million. The complex has 554,000 square feet of space and can house
up to 2,800 employees.[65]
On August 29, 2017, YouTube officially launched a redesign of its user interfaces based
on Material Design language, as well a redesigned logo that is built around the service's
play button emblem.[66]
On April 3, 2018, a shooting took place at YouTube's headquarters in San Bruno,
California.[67]
On May 17, 2018, YouTube announced the re-branding of YouTube Red as YouTube
Premium (accompanied by a major expansion of the service into Canada and 13 European
markets), as well as the upcoming launch of a separate YouTube Music subscription.[68]

Features
It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article
titled Features of YouTube. (Discuss) (February 2018)

Video technology
YouTube primarily uses the VP9 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video formats, and the Dynamic
Adaptive Streaming over HTTP protocol.[citation needed]
Playback
Previously, viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer required the Adobe Flash
Player plug-in to be installed in the browser.[69] In January 2010, YouTube launched an
experimental version of the site that used the built-in multimedia capabilities of web
browsers supporting the HTML5 standard.[70] This allowed videos to be viewed without
requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be installed.[71][72] The YouTube site had
a page that allowed supported browsers to opt into the HTML5 trial. Only browsers that
supported HTML5 Video using the MP4 (with H.264 video) or WebM (with VP8 video)
formats could play the videos, and not all videos on the site were available.[73][74]
On January 27, 2015, YouTube announced that HTML5 would be the default playback
method on supported browsers. YouTube used to employ Adobe Dynamic Streaming for
Flash,[75] but with the switch to HTML5 video now streams video using Dynamic Adaptive
Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), an adaptive bit-rate HTTP-based streaming solution
optimizing the bitrate and quality for the available network.[76]