YouTube at 21: The Platform, Its People, and the Numbers That Shaped a Generation of Video

A close look at who owns YouTube, where it operates, and how a video-sharing idea from 2005 grew into a cultural and economic force that now reaches more than two billion people a month.

There is a moment in the history of the internet that feels almost inevitable in retrospect. Three college friends in a garage in San Mateo, California, upload a grainy 18-second video on April 23, 2005. That video "Me at the zoo," featuring co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo becomes the first clip ever hosted on YouTube. It is still there today, a quiet monument to the fact that the largest video platform on earth began with one man, one zoo animal, and a camcorder....