20 years of YouTube

From a little elephant movie to a streaming empire

The YouTube streaming platform was launched on February 14, 2005.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/Proxima Studio / stock.adobe.com)

The first YouTuber in history comes from Germany. Jawed Karim was born on October 28, 1979 in Merseburg and has only lived in the USA since 1992. As one of three YouTube founders, Karim uploaded a clip of just 18 seconds on April 23, 2005 as the first video of a visit to the elephants at the San Diego Zoo on the then still inconspicuous video platform. Over the past 20 years, however, the short video has been viewed almost 360 million times.

However, the YouTube platform was launched on February 14, 2005, when friends Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim registered the domain youtube.com. The three former PayPal employees originally wanted to create a dating website where users could upload short videos to introduce themselves. However, this concept was quickly discarded. YouTube evolved into a general video platform where users could upload, share and watch videos.

First viral video with Ronaldinho
YouTube quickly became known not only in the internet community: The advertising industry also quickly discovered the platform for itself. In November 2005, a commercial featuring Ronaldinho from Nike was the first video to break the one million views barrier. This heralded the age of viral videos.

YouTube developed rapidly and even eclipsed Google Video - partly because the YouTube founders, who were still independent at the time, largely ignored the issue of copyright. Songs and music videos were available to watch and listen to for free on YouTube. However, the success of the platform drove the YouTube founders into a financial corner, as the constantly growing costs for streaming were hardly offset by any income.

In their search for a solvent investor, the three friends ended up with Susan Wojcicki, then head of Google Video. She was finally persuaded by a viral video of two boys who had filmed themselves singing a Backstreet Boys song on playback.

The YouTube founders negotiated the financial details of a takeover directly with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and company founder Larry Page. On October 9, 2006, it became public how much money the Internet giant was willing to spend on YouTube: 1.65 billion dollars (1.59 billion euros). At the time, this was an unimaginably high sum, but in retrospect it was more of a bargain. In addition to know-how, Google also bought market share. At the time, YouTube held almost 50 percent of the market, while Google Video only had 25 percent.

Building site copyright
The most pressing task for the new owner was initially to remedy the lax handling of copyright. Shortly before the takeover, YouTube had already reached agreements with major media companies such as CBS, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG to reduce legal problems.

One year after the takeover by Google, YouTube introduced the "Content ID" technology to enforce copyright protection more efficiently. The automated tool compares copyright-protected content with a reference database. Rights holders can then determine whether a video with their content is marketed through advertising or blocked. However, the system has not been able to settle all legal disputes with rights holders.

Meanwhile, the popularity of YouTube continued to grow. In March 2013, the threshold of one billion viewers per month was exceeded for the first time. Viral videos such as "Evolution of Dance" - the first YouTube video to pass the 100 million views mark - contributed to this success.

The song "Gangnam Style", released in 2012, is also a real internet phenomenon. In June 2014, this clip was the first video to achieve more than two billion views. It now has over five billion.

But even beyond music videos, the platform is an almost inexhaustible treasure trove of content, from repair instructions to make-up and fashion tips to test reports on cell phones, laptops and the like. And celebrities are always making headlines on YouTube. In August 2024, for example, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo launched his own YouTube channel and reached the one million subscriber mark within 90 minutes - a world record.

Politics on YouTube
The platform is also a political forum: in Germany, for example, YouTuber Rezo shook up the political landscape in May 2019 with his video "The destruction of the CDU". The post was the most-watched video of the year in 2019 and has reached 20 million views to date. Science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim posted her video "Corona is just getting started" online in April 2020. It became the most-watched video of the year and now has over 6.7 million views.

On YouTube, the creators themselves decide what they produce and how high the production costs are. If a video gets a lot of views and generates advertising revenue, the Google subsidiary gives the "creator" a 55% share of this revenue. According to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, his company has paid out 70 billion dollars to creators and partners for content within three years. YouTube does not take any financial risk: If a video flops, the company earns nothing. But it doesn't lose any money either.