Youtube is a site that many enjoy utilizing in the present day whether it be for learning, entertainment, or simply searching for an ease from boredom. It has a short history, beginning very recently with its registration on February 14th, 2005 by Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley. These three were former PayPal employees. They opened the site with the vision that everybody could easily share and enjoy personal videos. The meaning of YouTube’s name is quite simple. The “You” part means that the videos of the site are created by individual users. The “Tube” part is a throwback to an early alternative term for television.
The site of YouTube was receiving around 30,000 visitors each day when it was first opened as an incomplete beta version in May 2005. With this course of growth, the site had more than two million daily views of videos posted on it by the time that it was fully released on December 15th, 2005. A month after that in January of 2006, the number of videos on the site reached and toppled 25 million with 20,000 daily uploads.
What Youtube looked like in 2006.
However, the news for the site was not all positive. With the growth of the site, the company had to purchase increasing amounts of equipment to ensure connections with the internet. YouTube also had to distribute a large fraction of resources into the legal segment as there were concerns with some of the content containing copyrighted material. The success of YouTube gradually began losing momentum due to obstacles and worries over financial issues became prevalent.
With the company in a financial hurdle, YouTube was desperately seeking a buyer to relieve it of its burdens. Coincidentally, Google had just failed at initiating its own video service called Google Video because of low site traffic. The failure of Google Video pushed Google to purchase youtube in stock for $1.65 billion in November of 2006.
An image showing what Google Video looked like in
After the purchase of YouTube by Google, YouTube was operated as an independent site as it had been before the purchase. Google then negotiated with numerous entertainment companies to rid YouTube of copyright issues that had plagued it since before the purchase.
Over the next several years until 2012, YouTube gradually added features such as enabling advertisements and the ability to upload 1080p videos. In June of 2012, YouTube merged with Google video. After the merging of the two platforms, YouTube continued to add features that are present today such as two advertisements with one unskippable advertisement and a paid version that can be enjoyed without advertisements. Eventually, the addition of features and amenities on the site led to the present version of YouTube that a large population of people uses daily.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/youtubes-history-and-its-impact-on-the-internet
The site of YouTube was receiving around 30,000 visitors each day when it was first opened as an incomplete beta version in May 2005. With this course of growth, the site had more than two million daily views of videos posted on it by the time that it was fully released on December 15th, 2005. A month after that in January of 2006, the number of videos on the site reached and toppled 25 million with 20,000 daily uploads.
What Youtube looked like in 2006.
However, the news for the site was not all positive. With the growth of the site, the company had to purchase increasing amounts of equipment to ensure connections with the internet. YouTube also had to distribute a large fraction of resources into the legal segment as there were concerns with some of the content containing copyrighted material. The success of YouTube gradually began losing momentum due to obstacles and worries over financial issues became prevalent.
With the company in a financial hurdle, YouTube was desperately seeking a buyer to relieve it of its burdens. Coincidentally, Google had just failed at initiating its own video service called Google Video because of low site traffic. The failure of Google Video pushed Google to purchase youtube in stock for $1.65 billion in November of 2006.
An image showing what Google Video looked like in
After the purchase of YouTube by Google, YouTube was operated as an independent site as it had been before the purchase. Google then negotiated with numerous entertainment companies to rid YouTube of copyright issues that had plagued it since before the purchase.
Over the next several years until 2012, YouTube gradually added features such as enabling advertisements and the ability to upload 1080p videos. In June of 2012, YouTube merged with Google video. After the merging of the two platforms, YouTube continued to add features that are present today such as two advertisements with one unskippable advertisement and a paid version that can be enjoyed without advertisements. Eventually, the addition of features and amenities on the site led to the present version of YouTube that a large population of people uses daily.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/YouTube
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/youtubes-history-and-its-impact-on-the-internet 