“ That cornucopia of content appears to be turning YouTube — considered by many to be a risky investment when it was bought for $1.65 billion at the end of 2006 — into one of Google’s smartest acquisitions. On Monday, YouTube will celebrate its fifth birthday by announcing it has passed two billion video views a day; YouTube said it reached the one billion mark in October.
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From the NY Times article about YouTube’s 5th birthday.
Hard to believe that YouTube, this fixture of modern cultural existence, has only been around for 5 years. And it seems to only be growing faster and faster - amazed that they’ve doubled video views in the last 7 months.
And it seems that YouTube will perhaps break even financially this year and presumably generate cash flows for the foreseeable future - making the $1.6B acquisition by Google less of a stretch over time as it seemed at one point. We can argue forever about whether that was the right price. What’s clear is that YouTube is shaping modern culture, even if it is only a baby still.
