Concept in Definition ABC

It is, for several years, the online video on demand service that reigns in Internet.

We know it, above all, as one of the many success stories of Google, but YouTube was not initially created in the offices of the multinational Mountain View

Rather, it was three friends, three technicians who worked at Paypal at the time: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim. The official story tells that the idea arose when they wanted to share the videos recorded by each of them and the other attendees of a family party, Although this story would be nuanced afterwards as a simplification of the process that led to the creation of YouTube, and even denied as true.

On April 23, 2005, the first video was uploaded to YouTube, entitled Me at the zoo, which and to date, has had more than 32 million views and more than half a million likes.

The vision that the creators of YouTube had was not ahead of its time, as it happens to many ideas that fail because they try to materialize before their moment, but caused events to rush, and netizens loved the ability to watch videos from their desktops or devices mobiles.

YouTube was an immediate success, which was increased by various milestones, videos that then - and without know it since the term had not yet been coined in its most modern sense - it turned into viral. This is, for example, the case of a Nike ad with Ronaldinho, or the music video Lazy Sunday.

Years later this model of virality would be reproduced by other videos such as that of a screaming Britney Spears fan or the Korean hit Gangnam Style.

Parallel to the audience success that led YouTube to be one of the first pages in the lists of the most consulted, its evaluation soared

And it attracted the interest of the great majors network of networks, including Google. The multinational seeker He had tried building his own video service, Google Videos, which had not worked as well as expected, and could not snatch the leadership to YouTube.

And since Google had enough money, he didn't hesitate any longer: if you can't beat it, buy it. 1,650 million dollars in shares was the price he had to pay to acquire what is now one of the jewels in his particular crown.

During all this time, YouTube has not been left out of the controversies regarding intellectual property rights with the content that users upload to its service

And, as an example of this, we have the famous complaint by Viacom, the parent company that owns the channel. musical MTV and other channels of various content, which required Google to remove the videos that they infringed their copyright YouTube service.

Nor has he stayed at margin of controversies by the contents of their videos, such as incitement to hatred and violence, and even promoting terrorist activities.

To remedy these cases, YouTube has been introducing into its systems, mechanisms for automatic recognition of the use of music in videos that violate intellectual property rights, as well as mechanisms to report those videos that we believe violate our property rights intellectual.

Despite all these problems, YouTube has survived in enviable health and today is the unequivocal reference when it comes to online streaming video, in addition to one of the platforms advertising that brings greater benefits to your companymother, Google.

One of the latest attractions that the platform has incorporated is live video

Which has been used to broadcast various events and video game games, one of the most successful content on YouTube.

Photos: Fotolia - Littlemagic / Karl

Topics on YouTube