YouTube history: The founding and evolution of the video platform

YouTube was founded in 2005 by three former PayPal employees: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The platform was designed to solve the technical difficulties of the early 2000s, such as slow upload speeds and inconsistent video formats, by making video sharing as simple as sending a link.

Key milestones in the platform's history include the 2005 launch and the upload of the first video, ‘Me at the zoo,’ featuring co-founder Jawed Karim. Following rapid growth in traffic, Google acquired YouTube in 2006 to provide the necessary infrastructure and resources to manage increasing bandwidth and storage costs.