YouTube on Wednesday celebrated a major milestone: more than 20 billion videos have been uploaded to the platform since its launch two decades ago.
The video-sharing site, which began as a casual idea at a dinner party in 2005, has grown into the world’s largest digital video platform. It now averages around 20 million video uploads each day and reaches more than 2.5 billion viewers globally, according to market research firm Statista.
The first video uploaded to YouTube was “Me at the Zoo,” a 19-second clip posted by co-founder Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005. The video, showing Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo, has since amassed over 348 million views.
Originally founded by PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Karim, YouTube was launched under the domain YouTube.com on February 14, 2005. Just over a year later, Google acquired the platform for $1.65 billion in stock—a move that analysts now regard as one of the most strategic tech acquisitions in history.
The combination of Google’s advertising expertise and YouTube’s growing user base laid the foundation for a revenue-sharing model that helped attract and reward content creators. Over time, YouTube also addressed issues such as copyright infringement and inappropriate content, investing heavily in moderation tools and studio partnerships.
Today, YouTube content spans nearly every genre imaginable, including music, tutorials, political content, podcasts, and livestreams. According to eMarketer analyst Ross Benes, YouTube now leads in both viewer time and advertising revenue among all digital video services.
“YouTube is on track to surpass all US cable television providers in paid subscribers within two years,” Benes said. “If you go back 20 years, it would have seemed laughable that this website with kids making parody videos would become a threat to Disney, ABC, and CBS. That’s what they were able to accomplish.”
YouTube viewers now consume more than a billion hours of content daily on television screens alone, Google reported. To further enhance the TV experience, YouTube plans to roll out feature upgrades and quality improvements this summer, although specific details have not yet been disclosed.
The platform also boasts 100 million paying subscribers to its YouTube Premium and YouTube Music services.
As YouTube continues to compete with streaming giants like Netflix, Disney, and Amazon Prime, as well as short-form video challengers like TikTok and Instagram Reels, its place in the media landscape appears more entrenched than ever.