YouTube’s First Video Turns 20 — Here’s How Much the Video Giant Would Be Worth Today as a Stand-Alone Company
It’s the 20th anniversary of YouTube’s first video, “Me at the Zoo.”
YouTube turns 20 this year, and if it were a standalone business, it would be worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, according to analysts at MoffettNathanson, .
As of press time, that would place it on the biggest around No. 16, in between No. 15 Visa ($656B market cap) and No. 17 Mastercard ($494B market cap). For context, JPMorgan, the largest bank in the U.S., is No. 14 with a $680B market cap.
Related: This Platform Beats Apple and Spotify With 1 Billion Podcast Viewers Every Month
The first was cofounder Jawed Karim’s ““. The 19-second spot of Karim jokingly describing the elephant’s “cool” trunks at the San Diego Zoo launched the company to nearly overnight success: A year later, in 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.
The video has more than 355,000,000 views.
Meanwhile, YouTube is now the No. 2 most visited website in the world, , behind Google. Both companies are currently owned by Alphabet.
However, since Google has been ruled a “monopolist” twice in less than a year (last week and ) and is back in court this week regarding the DOJ’s request for the tech giant to , or other assets, , to remedy, it’s unclear if the video giant will stay a part of Alphabet.
A judge will decide by August.
YouTube turns 20 this year, and if it were a standalone business, it would be worth between $475 billion and $550 billion, according to analysts at MoffettNathanson, .
As of press time, that would place it on the biggest around No. 16, in between No. 15 Visa ($656B market cap) and No. 17 Mastercard ($494B market cap). For context, JPMorgan, the largest bank in the U.S., is No. 14 with a $680B market cap.
Related: This Platform Beats Apple and Spotify With 1 Billion Podcast Viewers Every Month
The first was cofounder Jawed Karim’s ““. The 19-second spot of Karim jokingly describing the elephant’s “cool” trunks at the San Diego Zoo launched the company to nearly overnight success: A year later, in 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.
The video has more than 355,000,000 views.
Meanwhile, YouTube is now the No. 2 most visited website in the world, , behind Google. Both companies are currently owned by Alphabet.
However, since Google has been ruled a “monopolist” twice in less than a year (last week and ) and is back in court this week regarding the DOJ’s request for the tech giant to , or other assets, , to remedy, it’s unclear if the video giant will stay a part of Alphabet.
A judge will decide by August.
