Twenty years of YouTube in 10 key dates
YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary this Friday, February 14, 2025. Since its creation, the platform has profoundly transformed the global digital and audiovisual landscape. Here are 10 key dates that have defined the YouTube story so far.
February 14, 2005: YouTube, a video hosting service, is launched by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, three former PayPal employees.
April 23, 2005: Jawed Karim uploads the first video to the platform, simply entitled “Me at the zoo.”
October 9, 2006: Google announces the acquisition of YouTube for $1.65 billion.
June 19, 2007: YouTube announces translated and localized sites for nine countries, including France, Spain, Italy and Poland, making the platform more accessible to global users.
May 3, 2007: launch of a program to monetize content posted on the platform.
July 15, 2012: Psy’s “Gangnam Style” music video is posted online and becomes the first video to reach one billion views. It now has a total of over five billion views.
February 15, 2015: launch of YouTube Kids, an app for children with age-appropriate content and integrated parental controls.
August 26, 2015: launch of YouTube Gaming, a streaming platform specifically dedicated to video games. This was then integrated directly into the YouTube platform in 2019.
September 15, 2020: launch in India of YouTube Shorts, a short video format echoing the style of TikTok. It rolled out worldwide the following year.
November 14, 2022: MrBeast overtakes PewDiePie to become the world’s most-followed YouTuber with over 112 million subscribers. Today, he has over 361 million subscribers!
