YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by
three former PayPal employees in February 2005 and
owned by Google since late 2006, on which
users can upload, view and share videos. The company
is based in San Bruno, California, and uses
Adobe Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display
a wide variety of user-generated video content,
including video clips, TV clips, and music
videos, and amateur content such as video blogging,
short original videos, and educational videos.
YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen,
and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees
of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied
computer science together at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign. Most of the content on YouTube
has been uploaded by individuals, but
media corporations including CBS, the BBC, Vevo,
Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their
material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership
program. Unregistered users can watch videos, and
registered users can upload an unlimited number
of videos. Videos considered to contain potentially
offensive content are available only to registered
users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years
old. YouTube, LLC was bought by Google for US$1.65
billion in November 2006 and now operates as a Google
subsidiary
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