On October 9 of 2006, Google acquired a burgeoning video sharing startup for $1.65 billion, barely a year after the infant website’s launch. At the time, many considered the purchase in the same vein we think of Musk’s Twitter takeover; the video sharing kickstart seemed to be a doomed venture, a prodigal child strangled in the crib by the deft hands of copyright lawyers and logistical issues.
But, those who were paying attention saw the real writing on the wall.
By the start of a limited beta launch in May of 2005, the site was attracting 30,000 users a day. By the end of its first year, the website was pumping out two million views a day; by the start of 2006, 25 million (Britannica). Google saw the vast potential of such a booming website, and promptly swooped in for the e-goliath’s second largest merger ever. In the motherload of all corporate acquisitions, Google bought what would become the preeminent video sharing platform on the planet, a website that goes toe to toe with legacy media and international streaming services, a contributor to 11% of Google Inc., now Alphabet, profits, a trademark to the medium that would define a generation’s childhood. On October 9 of 2006, Google Inc. bought YouTube.
Of the over eight billion people on the planet in 2024, roughly 2.7 billion are active YouTube users. In its current state, YouTiube has achieved an unfathomable level of global interconnectedness. Just 30 years ago, people’s primary means of visual entertainment was delegated to televisions and silver screens—the medium was dominated by professional industries. From film production to broadcasting services, media content proprietorship was tightly held by corporations. But, when YouTube came around, a crack in the professional barrier between the individual consumer and content production began to form. In the past 18 years, that crack has brought down the barrier almost entirely.
Everybody everywhere can create content. Everyone everywhere can attract an audience. The ubiquity is both beautiful and dangerous.
On one hand, YouTube unites the world, negating pretty much all physical, geographical boundaries. As long as you’ve got wifi and YouTube in your country, the website’s endless catalog is yours to access and contribute to. It’s a collective, visual library, accounting the thoughts, feelings, actions, likes, and dislikes of billions of people. YouTube’s accessibility enables the individual’s international export of content, creating and maintaining a globalized information network. That feat alone redefines the social conventions of the entirety of human history; never before could someone interact with so many people across so much distance. Individuals now have access to millions of viewers, shifting the status quo from the relatively elitist system of legacy media to a pluralist competition for attention.
On the other hand, YouTube’s approachability is arguably the most dangerous feature. Like it or not, there was a reason media content was trusted solely in the hands of professionals and their industries. These people knew what they were doing, and more importantly could be held accountable for their actions. If you want to be a journalist, you need legitimate credentials. If you want to be a YouTuber, you need a wifi connection. While the ease of access in an environment solely dependent on entertainment skill can promote a more fluid merit system of success, it also removes the liability and credibility of content creators. Look at Andrew Tate. What were his qualifications? Just a kickboxing college dropout who suffered one too many strikes to the head. Yet, he reached millions upon millions of young people nonetheless, promoting misogynistic, binary, and malignant ideas, all the while making millions of dollars off such efforts. Legacy media has its fair share of con men and weirdos, but YouTube has opened the floodgates.
What’s more, YouTube has also helped perpetuate the festering attention economy. Though platforms like Instagram and TikTok have jumped on the trend train, YouTube was arguably the first large scale platform to truly blend the consumer and the producer, in turn prioritizing a viewer’s attention over anything else. A godless chimera of buyer and product, YouTube profits from auctioning off their user’s attention under the guides of algorithmic suggestions. In truth, users are just as vulnerable to other malicious users as they are to the platform itself.
Ultimately, YouTube’s global diaspora of both the individual’s ability to produce content and commodified control over viewership are the finite powers of a monopolized market on the brink of regulatory crackdown. Like any bustling new innovation, economic interest outweighs the morality of corporate decision making, galvanizing robust advancement at the cost of the consumer. But, inevitably, the market’s growingly malignant rise will rebound back at the overseeing monopolies. A testament to the individual’s creativity, unity, compartmentability, and vulnerability, YouTube serves as a reflection of human nature. From greed to charity, compassion to malice, YouTube documents the state of a species and the whirlwinds of the modern era.