Happy birthday, YouTube! The internet’s favorite time-sucking, culture-defining, rabbit-hole-generating platform just turned 20 years old today. That’s right—on February 14, 2005, three former PayPal employees launched a little website where people could upload videos. Flash-forward to 2025, and it’s basically the backbone of modern pop culture, education (shoutout to DIY home repairs), and whatever’s left of our collective attention span.

A Quick-Play History of YouTube (No Skipping Ads Allowed)
2005: The Birth of the Beast

• YouTube.com is officially registered on Valentine’s Day—romantic, considering how much time we spend with it.
• The first-ever video, Me at the Zoo, features co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of some elephants, oblivious to the billion-dollar empire he’s about to help create.

2006: Google Swoops In

• Google, seeing the cha-ching potential, buys YouTube for a cool $1.65 billion in stock. Everyone thinks they’re insane. Everyone is wrong.

2007–2010: The Wild West Era

• The first viral videos (Charlie Bit My Finger, Numa Numa, Chocolate Rain) take over the world.
• YouTube introduces monetization, and suddenly, making dumb videos on the internet is a career path.
• Justin Bieber is discovered on YouTube. (Mixed feelings on this one.)

2011–2015: The Rise of the YouTuber™

• PewDiePie, Jenna Marbles, Smosh, and Shane Dawson become digital royalty.
• Gangnam Style breaks the internet (and YouTube’s view counter).
• Google introduces YouTube Red—because charging people for free content seemed like a good idea?

2016–2020: Oh No, It’s Getting Serious

• Logan Paul goes to that forest.
• TikTok shows up, and YouTube panics. Enter YouTube Shorts—because copying the competition is cheaper than innovation.
• The infamous YouTube Rewind 2018 becomes the most disliked video on the platform. YouTube promptly cancels Rewind forever.

2021–Present: The YouTube Empire

MrBeast becomes the most-followed YouTuber, proving that giving away millions of dollars is a solid business model.
AI-generated content explodes, and suddenly, you’re watching a deepfake of SpongeBob reviewing The Godfather.
YouTube rakes in $50 billion in revenue (72.3% from ads) in 2024, because of course it does.

So What Now?

At 20 years old, YouTube has gone from a scrappy startup to the second-most-visited website in the world (Google still holds the crown, naturally). It’s where we learn, laugh, spiral into conspiracy theories at 3 a.m., and question why we’re watching a 45-minute documentary on the history of a discontinued soda.

The company also released a blog post with thier top predictions for the future of YouTube in 2025:

• YouTube will remain the epicenter of culture.
• YouTubers are becoming the startups of Hollywood.
• YouTube is the new television.
• AI will make it easier to create and enhance the YouTube experience for everyone.

Youtube the new television? Netflix would like to disagree—and the epicenter of culture is more likely Tiktok or even Twitter (X), but you’ve got to respect their confidence.

Happy 20th, YouTube. Here’s to another two decades of autoplay keeping us awake at night. 🎉