On this day twenty years ago, December 17, 2005, YouTube was born. By which I mean the SNL Digital Short “Lazy Sunday” was aired during an episode featuring guest host Jack Black and musical guest Neil Young.
Youtube was nothing before this dropped, just one among many burgeoning video sharing sites, and immediately after became one of the most popular sites on the internet, despite NBC doing everything they could to take the video down.
YouTube just a couple of years later would sell itself to Google for a then-massive $1.65 billion. Not bad for a platform that had been created to be a knock-off Hot or Not video dating site.
It may seem quaint to think back on a time when a tech platform could become a success based on illegally appropriating copyrighted content. Surely lighting like that could never strike several more times or be the only thing pushing tech at the present moment 20 years later.
