Chen, a Taiwanese-born engineer, and Hurley met while working at online payment service PayPal Inc. In classic Silicon Valley fashion, they set up business in Hurley's garage and began working on what would become YouTube. Chen's cat, P.J., was featured prominently in some of the site's earliest home videos.
Their work attracted the attention of PayPal's former chief financial officer, Roelof Botha, who had joined investment firm Sequoia Capital, known for funding such technology standouts as Google, Apple Computer Inc. and Yahoo. Sequoia gave YouTube $3.5 million in November 2005, and YouTube was formally launched the next month.
Only a few years ago Google was the Internet's biggest upstart, trying to figure out how to capitalize on the millions of visitors to its site. It answered that question with simple text ads that now generate billions of dollars a year.
But on Monday Google executives found themselves to be the old kids on the block. In a conference call from YouTube's new offices, they said that video distribution was clearly the next stage in the Internet's development and that YouTube was the clear winner in building communities around video.
"This really reminds me of Google just a few short years ago," co-founder Sergey Brin said.
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chris.gaither@latimes.com
dawn.chmielewski@latimes.com
Gaither reported from San Francisco, Chmielewski from Los Angeles.
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Video market
Video services' share of the online market, based on number of website visits in September
YouTube: 46%
MySpace Videos: 21.2%
Google Video: 11%
MSN Video: 6.8%
Yahoo Video: 5.6%
Others: 9.4%
Source: Hitwise
