Karim could not easily find video clips of the incident and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site. The three were early employees at avalon78 casino PayPal and had become wealthy after eBay’s acquisition of the company. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads.
In January 2010, YouTube introduced a film rentals service, available in many countries, and TV shows can be bought in several countries. YouTube had $29.2 billion ads revenue in 2022, up by $398 million from the prior year. According to Google, YouTube had made US$15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019, in contrast to US$8.1 billion in 2017 and US$11.1 billion in 2018. Google first published exact revenue numbers for YouTube in February 2020 as part of Alphabet’s 2019 financial report. Prior to 2020, Google did not provide detailed figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as “not material” in a regulatory filing.
Around the same time, YouTube started using server-side ad injection, which allows the platform to inject the ads directly into the video, instead of having the ad as a separate file which can be blocked. In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs. Additionally, to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, YouTube released YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform. Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021.
In December 2012, two billion views were removed from the view counts of Universal and Sony music videos on YouTube, prompting a claim by The Daily Dot that the views had been deleted due to a violation of the site’s terms of service, which ban the use of automated processes to inflate view counts. The platform aims to penalize creators using misleading or sensationalized titles, with potential actions including video removal or channel suspension. The site grew rapidly; 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. As of May 2019update, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of mid-2024update, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total.
In September 2022, YouTube TV began allowing customers to purchase most of its premium add-ons (excluding certain services such as NBA League Pass and AMC+) without an existing subscription to its base package. Discovery (including among others Bravo, USA Network, Syfy, Disney Channel, CNN, Cartoon Network, E!, Fox Sports 1, Freeform, FX and ESPN). Other functions of Google Play Movies & TV were integrated into the Google TV service. First released on February 15, 2015, as an Android and iOS mobile app, the app has since been released for LG, Samsung, and Sony smart TVs, as well as for Android TV.
- Russia threatened to ban YouTube after the platform deleted two German RT channels in September 2021.
- It was at this time that YouTube adopted the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”.The company experienced rapid growth.
- In December 2024, YouTube began testing a new multiplayer feature for that service, supporting multiplayer functionality across desktop and mobile devices.
- In September 2022, YouTube TV began allowing customers to purchase most of its premium add-ons (excluding certain services such as NBA League Pass and AMC+) without an existing subscription to its base package.
- The service continued to evolve in 2015 when 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.
- Get the official YouTube app on iPhones and iPads.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of the world was under stay-at-home orders, usage of services like YouTube significantly increased. YouTube released a mobile app known as YouTube Kids in 2015, which was designed to provide an experience optimized for children. These channel subscriptions complemented the existing Super Chat ability, launched in 2017, which allows viewers to donate between $1 and $500 to have their comment highlighted.
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- YouTube began offering free-to-view movie titles to its users in November 2018; selections of new movies are added and others removed, unannounced each month.
- In May 2007, YouTube launched its Partner Program (YPP), a system based on AdSense which allows the uploader of the video to share the revenue produced by advertising on the site.
- YouTube typically takes 45 percent of the advertising revenue from videos in the Partner Program, with 55 percent going to the uploader.
- You can find and download apps and digital content in the Google Play app .
- YouTube has been led by a CEO since its founding in 2005, beginning with Chad Hurley, who led the company until 2010.
- Around the same time, YouTube started using server-side ad injection, which allows the platform to inject the ads directly into the video, instead of having the ad as a separate file which can be blocked.
As of June 2017update, the first season of YouTube Originals had received 250 million views in total. YouTube Premium (formerly Music Key and YouTube Red) is YouTube’s premium subscription service. In 2012, clicking on the image of a DVD next to the site logo led to a video about a purported option to order every YouTube video for home delivery on DVD. The next year, the site celebrated its “100th anniversary” with a range of sepia-toned silent, early 1900s-style films, including a parody of Keyboard Cat.
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YouTube gives an option for copyright holders to locate and remove their videos or to have them continue running for revenue. This will occur on channels whose content is deemed “advertiser-friendly”, and all revenue will go directly to Google without any share given to the uploader. DeFranco argued that not being able to earn advertising revenue on such videos was “censorship by a different name”. The move was seen as an attempt to ensure that videos being monetized did not lead to controversy, but was criticized for penalizing smaller YouTube channels.
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The majority of YouTube’s advertising revenue goes to the publishers and video producers who hold the rights to their videos; the company retains 45% of the ad revenue. In early April 2017, the YouTube channel h3h3Productions presented evidence claiming that a Wall Street Journal article had fabricated screenshots showing major brand advertising on an offensive video containing Johnny Rebel music overlaid on a Chief Keef music video, citing that the video itself had not earned any ad revenue for the uploader. In March 2017, the government of the United Kingdom pulled its advertising campaigns from YouTube, after reports that its ads had appeared on videos containing extremist content.
In March 2007, it struck a deal with the BBC for three channels with BBC content, one for news and two for entertainment. The vast majority of videos on YouTube are free to view and supported by advertising. In May 2018, after London Metropolitan Police claimed that drill music videos glamorizing violence gave rise to gang violence, YouTube deleted 30 videos. It also found more “mainstream-adjacent Conservative creators” gaining over alt-right and extremist videos by 2020. Journalist Virginia Heffernan stated in The New York Times that such videos have “surprising implications” for the dissemination of culture and even the future of classical music.
In the 2011 case of Smith v. Summit Entertainment LLC, professional singer Matt Smith sued Summit Entertainment for the wrongful use of copyright takedown notices on YouTube. In August 2008, a US court ruled in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp. that copyright holders cannot order the removal of an online file without first determining whether the posting reflected fair use of the material. Any successful complaint about copyright infringement results in a YouTube copyright strike. Despite this advice, many unauthorized clips of copyrighted material remain on YouTube. On August 5, 2015, YouTube patched the formerly notorious behavior which caused a video’s view count to freeze at “301” (later “301+”) until the actual count was verified to prevent view count fraud. YouTube has been led by a CEO since its founding in 2005, beginning with Chad Hurley, who led the company until 2010.
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Following criticisms of its implementation of those systems, YouTube started treating all videos designated as “made for kids” as liable under COPPA on January 6, 2020. By February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube videos were being watched every day, and 400 hours worth of videos were uploaded every minute. YouTube officially launched the “polymer” redesign of its user interfaces based on Material Design language as its default, as well as a redesigned logo that is built around the service’s play button emblem in August 2017. In April 2010, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” became the most-viewed video, becoming the first video to reach 200 million views on May 9, 2010.
That was disputed by Billboard, which said that the two billion views had been moved to Vevo, since the videos were no longer active on YouTube. On September 23, 2025, YouTube parent company Alphabet announced that it would reinstate creators that were banned for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In December 2024, YouTube introduced new guidelines prohibiting videos with clickbait titles to enhance content quality and combat misinformation.
Some YouTube videos have themselves had a direct effect on world events, such as Innocence of Muslims (2012) which spurred protests and related anti-American violence internationally. Whereas YouTube’s inherent ability to allow presidents to directly connect with average citizens was noted, the YouTube content creators’ new media savvy was perceived necessary to better cope with the website’s distracting content and fickle audience. President Obama held a meeting at the White House with leading YouTube content creators not only to promote awareness of Obamacare but more generally to develop ways for government to better connect with the “YouTube Generation”. Concurrently, old media celebrities moved into the website at the invitation of a YouTube management that witnessed early content creators accruing substantial followings and perceived audience sizes potentially larger than that attainable by television. As of 2018, public access to YouTube was blocked by countries including China, North Korea, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan.
The decision of Alphabet to bring back YouTube creators who engaged in misinformation was criticized for prioritizing “free expression” over “facts”. The user must go through age verification via payment, scanned ID, or selfie to access all features if they are detected to be a minor. On YouTube, this will be based on factors such as searches and video history, and the age of the account. As of December 2024update the Playables catalog has over 130 games in various genres, including trivia, action and sports.