YouTube
Video-sharing and streaming platform founded in 2005 in California and owned by Google since 2006. Funded by advertising and subscriptions, it reported more than $60 billion in revenue for 2025.
Industry: Video streaming | Location: San Bruno, United States | Founded: 2005
About YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing and streaming platform owned by Google, which is part of Alphabet. Its stated mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. The company is based in San Bruno, California, and says it has localised versions in more than 100 countries across 80 languages. Its press page says more than 20 million videos are uploaded each day on average.
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, all former PayPal employees, and opened to the public in December 2005. Neal Mohan has been chief executive since 2023, when he succeeded Susan Wojcicki. He joined Google in 2007 through its acquisition of DoubleClick and became YouTube's chief product officer in 2015.
YouTube earns money from advertising and from subscription products including YouTube Premium, YouTube Music and YouTube TV. Shorts averages 200 billion daily views, and more than 500,000 creators were in YouTube Shopping as of January 2026. Copyright owners can submit reference files to Content ID, YouTube's automated identification system, which scans uploads against them and lets the owner block, monetise or track a match.
Google announced on 9 October 2006 that it would buy YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock and keep its brand. The deal closed in November 2006, and YouTube has since operated as a Google subsidiary.
Alphabet reported on 4 February 2026 that YouTube's revenue across advertising and subscriptions exceeded $60 billion in 2025, the first time it gave a combined figure. Advertising revenue was $11.38 billion in the fourth quarter, up from $10.47 billion a year earlier. Mohan wrote in January 2026 that YouTube had paid more than $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies over the previous four years.
In that letter Mohan said Nielsen's Gauge report had ranked YouTube first in United States streaming watch time for nearly three years, and that more than one million channels used its AI creation tools daily in December 2025. Planned changes include image posts in Shorts and multiview on YouTube TV.
Leadership
- Neal Mohan, Chief Executive Officer