Early Days
YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The idea for the platform was born out of a difficulty in finding and sharing videos online.
- The first video ever uploaded to YouTube was a 19-second video titled 'Me at the zoo', featuring co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo.
- In the early days, YouTube's founders worked out of a small garage in San Mateo, California.
Rise to Fame
In October 2006, YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock. This acquisition helped YouTube expand its user base and improve its infrastructure.
- By 2007, YouTube had become one of the fastest-growing websites on the internet, with millions of users uploading and sharing videos daily.
- The platform's popularity continued to soar, and by 2010, YouTube had become the second-largest search engine in the world, after Google.