YouTube

YouTube was co-founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim to provide a video uploading and sharing service. The investment profile of early investor Sequoia Capital records 2005 as both the year the company was founded and the year the two established their investment relationship.⁠[1]

Google announced the completion of its acquisition of YouTube for approximately $1.65 billion in Google stock. YouTube retained its own brand and continued to develop around video sharing.⁠[2]

YouTube launched its Partner Program, allowing eligible creators of original videos to share in advertising revenue. On December 10, the platform announced it was broadening eligibility to let users in the United States and Canada apply to join, after first piloting the program with a selection of creators.⁠[3]

YouTube Kids launched in 2015 for children’s viewing, offering parental controls. The platform later added supervised experiences that let parents choose the range of content and some usage limits.⁠[4]

YouTube TV launched in 2017, combining live television channels with an online subscription. The service offers features such as cloud recording; in June 2021, it further introduced the 4K Plus add-on, adding options such as 4K content and offline viewing of recordings.⁠[5]

YouTube announced that YouTube Red, launched in 2015, would be upgraded to YouTube Premium. The product lineup in the announcement included ad-free videos, background play, and downloads, along with a redesigned YouTube Music service.⁠[6]

YouTube Shorts began testing in India in the fall of 2020, centered on short-form video creation on mobile phones. By June 2022, the platform said Shorts had reached more than 100 countries and was surpassing 30 billion daily views.⁠[4]

Susan Wojcicki announced that she was stepping down as head of YouTube, to be succeeded by Neal Mohan. Mohan had been Chief Product Officer since 2015 and had been involved in developing products such as YouTube TV, Music, Premium, and Shorts; Wojcicki said she would help with the transition and take on an advisory role across Google and Alphabet.⁠[7]

In its twentieth-anniversary retrospective, YouTube said that more than 20 billion videos had been uploaded to the platform in total and that more than 20 million videos were being added each day at that time. These figures describe the scale of the content supply, not the number of platform users.⁠[8]

After the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol, YouTube suspended Donald J. Trump’s account, and Trump, together with other plaintiffs, subsequently sued YouTube and Sundar Pichai in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (Case No. 4:21-cv-08009-YGR). On September 29, 2025, the parties filed a notice of settlement and stipulation of dismissal with the court: Alphabet, of which YouTube is an indirect subsidiary, would pay a total of $24.5 million, of which $22 million would settle Trump’s own claims and, at his direction, be contributed on his behalf to the Trust for the National Mall to support construction of the White House State Ballroom; the remaining $2.5 million would go to the other plaintiffs, including the American Conservative Union and Naomi Wolf. The action was dismissed with prejudice; the filing states that the settlement does not constitute an admission of liability or fault by the defendants.⁠[9][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10][10]

Neal Mohan set out the year’s priorities, covering the creator business, children and teens, TV viewing, and artificial intelligence tools. The announcement said that Shorts was averaging 200 billion daily views and that YouTube had paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over the previous four years.⁠[11]

YouTube announced changes to its partner terms, slated to take effect on February 1, 2027. The announcement set the threshold for new applicants to share in advertising and Premium revenue at 8,000 hours of qualifying watch time in the past 365 days or 20 million qualifying Shorts views in the past 90 days; existing partners are not affected by this change to the entry threshold. The announcement also set separate ongoing viewership conditions for Shorts revenue sharing and stated that the eligibility thresholds for fan funding and shopping products would remain unchanged.⁠[12]

At its Made on YouTube event, YouTube introduced new viewing and creation features, including a structure for organizing Shorts into series, seasons, and episodes, and tools to help creators edit and test content. The announcement also previewed directions such as adjusting content recommendations with text prompts and expanding likeness and voice detection protections; some features were still planned for later rollout at the time.⁠[13]

YouTube connects video creators, viewers, and advertisers, with products spanning video sharing, short-form video, music, live streaming, and subscriptions. Its organizational profile states that it is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States, and is part of Google.⁠[14][15]

YouTube’s copyright tools include the removal request webform, the Copyright Match Tool, and Content ID. The first two help rights holders report or find duplicate content; Content ID allows eligible rights holders to set rules in advance to block, monetize, or track viewership of matching videos. The platform also provides ways to dispute removal requests or claims.⁠[16]

YouTube: Official website: https://www.youtube.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[15]

X: Public account: https://x.com/YouTube (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/company/youtube/ (opens in a new window)⁠[14]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/@YouTube (opens in a new window)⁠[11]