The system, which was initially called “Video Identification” and later became known as Content ID, creates an ID File for copyrighted audio and video material, and stores it in a database. In April 2013, it was reported that Universal Music Group and YouTube have a contractual agreement that prevents content blocked on YouTube by a request from UMG from being restored, even if the uploader of the video files a DMCA counter-notice. In April 2012, a court in Hamburg ruled that YouTube could be held responsible for copyrighted material posted by its users. YouTube’s owner Google announced in November 2015 that they would help cover the legal cost in select cases where they believe fair use defenses apply. From 2007 to 2009 organizations including Viacom, Mediaset, and the English Premier League have filed lawsuits against YouTube, claiming that it has done too little to prevent the uploading of copyrighted material. YouTube has an estimated 14.8 billion videos with about 4% of those never having a view.
On October 9, 2006, Google announced that they had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock. The choice of the name youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, utube.com. Despite eventually being taken down, these duplicate uploads of the skit helped popularize YouTube’s reach and led to the upload of more third-party content. Besides helping to bolster ratings and long-term viewership for Saturday Night Live, “Lazy Sunday”‘s status as an early viral video helped establish YouTube as an important website. YouTube was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet; Vimeo was founded in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor.

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Whereas YouTube’s inherent ability to allow presidents to directly connect with average citizens was noted, the YouTube content creators’ new media savvy was perceived necessary to better cope with the website’s distracting content and fickle audience. President Obama held a meeting at the White House with leading YouTube content creators not only to promote awareness of Obamacare but more generally to develop ways for government to better connect with the “YouTube Generation”. Concurrently, old media celebrities moved into the website at the invitation of a YouTube management that witnessed early content creators accruing substantial followings and perceived audience sizes potentially larger than that attainable by television. As of 2018, public access to YouTube was blocked by countries including China, North Korea, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Eritrea, Sudan and South Sudan.

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In February 2017, YouTube Go was launched in India, and expanded in November 2017 onedun to 14 other countries, including Nigeria, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Kenya, and South Africa. Discovery (including among others Bravo, USA Network, Syfy, Disney Channel, CNN, Cartoon Network, E!, Fox Sports 1, Freeform, FX and ESPN). Other functions of Google Play Movies & TV were integrated into the Google TV service. First released on February 15, 2015, as an Android and iOS mobile app, the app has since been released for LG, Samsung, and Sony smart TVs, as well as for Android TV. As of June 2017update, the first season of YouTube Originals had received 250 million views in total.
At the time of uploading a video, YouTube users are shown a message asking them not to violate copyright laws. YouTube has faced numerous challenges and criticisms in its attempts to deal with copyright, including the site’s first viral video, Lazy Sunday, which had to be taken down, due to copyright concerns. On November 11, 2021, after testing out this change in March of the same year, YouTube announced it would start hiding dislike counts on videos, making them invisible to viewers. That was disputed by Billboard, which said that the two billion views had been moved to Vevo, since the videos were no longer active on YouTube.
YouTube has cited the effectiveness of Content ID as one of the reasons why the site’s rules were modified in December 2010 to allow some users to upload videos of unlimited length. An independent test in 2009 uploaded multiple versions of the same song to YouTube and concluded that while the system was “surprisingly resilient” in finding copyright violations in the audio tracks of videos, it was not infallible. In June 2007, YouTube began trials of a system for automatic detection of uploaded videos that infringe copyright. On November 1, 2016, the dispute with GEMA was resolved, with Google content ID being used to allow advertisements to be added to videos with content protected by GEMA. Three successful complaints for copyright infringement against a user account will result in the account and all of its uploaded videos being deleted. YouTube does not view videos before they are posted online, and it is left to copyright holders to issue a DMCA takedown notice pursuant to the terms of the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act.
By February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube videos were being watched every day, and 400 hours worth of videos were uploaded every minute. These channel subscriptions complemented the existing Super Chat ability, launched in 2017, which allows viewers to donate between $1 and $500 to have their comment highlighted. This effort was discontinued in January 2018 and relaunched in June, with US$4.99 channel subscriptions. In April 2010, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” became the most-viewed video, becoming the first video to reach 200 million views on May 9, 2010. Hurley announced that he would be stepping down as chief executive officer of YouTube to take an advisory role and that Salar Kamangar would take over as head of the company in October 2010. In 2011, more than three billion videos were being watched each day with 48 hours of new videos uploaded every minute.
The platform aims to penalize creators using misleading or sensationalized titles, with potential actions including video removal or channel suspension. The service continued to evolve in 2015 when YouTube announced YouTube Red, a new premium service that would offer ad-free access to all content on the platform (succeeding the Music Key service released the previous year), premium original series, and films produced by YouTube personalities, as well as background playback of content on mobile devices. In 2014, YouTube announced a subscription service known as “Music Key”, which bundled ad-free streaming of music content on YouTube with the existing Google Play Music service. The site grew rapidly; in July 2006, the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. As of May 2019update, videos were being uploaded to the platform at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute, and as of mid-2024update, there were approximately 14.8 billion videos in total. YouTube gives an option for copyright holders to locate and remove their videos or to have them continue running for revenue.

• The lawsuit was filed due to alleged copyright infringement of Viacom’s material by YouTube.
• Most content is generated by individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and corporate sponsors.
• A Pew Research Center study reported the development of “visual journalism”, in which citizen eyewitnesses and established news organizations share in content creation.
• Unofficial uploads of the skit to YouTube drew in more than five million collective views by February 2006 before they were removed when NBCUniversal requested it two months later based on copyright concerns.
• It was at this time that YouTube adopted the slogan “Broadcast Yourself”.The company experienced rapid growth.
• Besides helping to bolster ratings and long-term viewership for Saturday Night Live, “Lazy Sunday”‘s status as an early viral video helped establish YouTube as an important website.

By 2010, the company had reached a market share of around 43% and more than 14 billion views of videos, according to comScore. Despite its growth and success, the platform has been criticized for its facilitation of the spread of misinformation and copyrighted content, routinely violating its users’ privacy, excessive censorship, endangering the safety of children and their well-being, and for its inconsistent implementation of platform guidelines. YouTube incorporated the Google AdSense program, generating more revenue for both YouTube and approved content creators. In February 2015, Nintendo agreed to share the revenue with the video creators through the Nintendo Creators Program. In 2010, it was reported that nearly a third of the videos with advertisements were uploaded without permission of the copyright holders. A YouTube spokesperson stated that while the policy itself was not new, the service had “improved the notification and appeal process to ensure better communication to our creators”.

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In 2013, YouTube teamed up with satirical newspaper company The Onion to claim in an uploaded video that the video-sharing website was launched as a contest which had finally come to an end, and would shut down for ten years before being re-launched in 2023, featuring only the winning video. In October 2024, a Russian court fined Google 2 undecillion rubles (equivalent to US$20 decillion) for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube. Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, YouTube removed all channels funded by the Russian state.

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The company stated the decision was in response to experiments which confirmed that smaller YouTube creators were more likely to be targeted in dislike brigading and harassment. On April 9, 2025, YouTube expressed support for the NO FAKES Act of 2025, introduced by Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and announced an expansion of its pilot program that is designed to identify content generated by AI. On July 30, 2025, amid the implementation of the Online Safety Act 2023 in the United Kingdom, Google announced that it would begin to enforce “age assurance” policies for selected users in the United States as a trial. Around the same time, YouTube started using server-side ad injection, which allows the platform to inject the ads directly into the video, instead of having the ad as a separate file which can be blocked. In April 2024, YouTube announced it would be “strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps”. Users of ad blockers may be given a pop-up warning saying “Video player will be blocked after 3 videos”.

It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads. Google expanded YouTube’s business model from generating revenue through advertisements alone to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content explicitly produced for YouTube. YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. In January 2010, YouTube introduced a film rentals service, available in many countries, and TV shows can be bought in several countries.

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According to TubeMogul, in 2013 a pre-roll advertisement on YouTube (one that is shown before the video starts) cost advertisers on average $7.60 per 1000 views. Google stated that it had “begun an extensive review of our advertising policies and have made a public commitment to put in place changes that give brands more control over where their ads appear”. The government demanded assurances that its advertising would “be delivered safely and appropriately”.

• In November 2016, YouTube released YouTube VR, a dedicated version with an interface for VR devices, for Google’s Daydream mobile VR platform on Android.
• The same day, the company launched a public beta and by November, a Nike ad featuring Ronaldinho became the first video to reach one million total views.
• On April 6, 2017, YouTube announced that to “ensure revenue only flows to creators who are playing by the rules”, it would change its practices to require that a channel undergo a policy compliance review, and have at least 10,000-lifetime views, before they may join the YouTube Partner Program.
• YouTube Premium was originally announced on November 12, 2014, as “Music Key”, a subscription music streaming service, and was intended to integrate with and replace the existing Google Play Music “All Access” service.
• Under YouTube’s changes to its recommendation engine, the most-recommended channel evolved from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (2016) to Fox News (2019).

In December 2024, YouTube began testing a new multiplayer feature for that service, supporting multiplayer functionality across desktop and mobile devices. Starting in June 2024, Google Chrome announced that it would be replacing Manifest V2 in favor of Manifest V3, effectively killing support for most ad-blockers. In late October 2023, YouTube began cracking down on the use of ad blockers on the platform.