well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos. Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, although media corporations including CBS, the BBC, UMG and other organizations offer some of their material via the site, as part of the YouTube partnership program.

Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos that are considered to contain potentially offensive content are available only to registered users over the age of 18. The uploading of videos containing defamation, pornography, copyright violations, and material encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited by YouTube's terms of service. The account profiles of registered users are referred to as "channels".

Unblock and Access YouTube in China

YouTube has once again been blocked by the Government of China and therefore users in China are unable to access or watch videos on the popular video sharing website.

We have got a couple of hacks which might help users from China in unblocking and accessing YouTube in their region. Some of these hacks and tricks have gone obsolete with time but most of them still do work.

Most effective of all remains the FreedomStick project which is basically a collection of pre-installed software that can be mounted on any USB flash drive and can be used to bypass any sort of firewall.

The FreedomStick project is specially focused towards helping users in China in bypassing the great Internet firewall which filters all traffic and information.

vTunnel, on the other hand, provides an in-browser proxy solution to access YouTube behind any firewall and watch videos. It is highly recommended for its good performance and high-speed streaming.

Also, UltraSurf is another light software proxy client along with some other free tools to bypass Internet firewalls. For quite a different scenario, HotSpot Shield can be used to access Internet over a private VPN.

And if you know the URL of a video on YouTube, simply head over to Keepvid to download a copy of it locally to your computer and watch it without any restrictions.

 

had occurred, while Chad Hurley commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible."

YouTube began as a venture-funded technology startup, primarily from a US$11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006. YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www.youtube.com was activated on February 14, 2005, and the website was developed over the subsequent months. The first YouTube video was entitled Me at the zoo, and shows founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23, 2005, and can still be viewed on the site.

YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005, six months before the official launch in November 2005. The site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. According to data published by market research company comScore, YouTube is the dominant provider of online video in the United States, with a market share of around 43 percent and more than six billion videos viewed in January 2009. It is estimated that 20 hours of new videos are uploaded to the site every minute, and that around three quarters of the material comes from outside the United States. It is also estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. In March 2008, YouTube's bandwidth costs were estimated at approximately US$1 million a day. Alexa ranks YouTube as the fourth most visited website on the Internet, behind Google, Yahoo! and Facebook.

The choice of the name www.youtube.com led to problems for a similarly named website, www.utube.com. The owner of the site, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being overloaded on a regular basis by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www.utubeonline.com.

In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube's running costs, and YouTube's revenues in 2007 were noted as "not material" in a regulatory filing. In June 2008 a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales.

In November 2008, YouTube reached an agreement with MGM, Lions Gate Entertainment and CBS, allowing the companies to post full-length films and television episodes on the site, accompanied by advertisements in a section for US viewers called "Shows". The move was intended to create competition with websites such as Hulu, which features material from NBC, Fox, and Disney. In November 2009, YouTube launched a version of "Shows" available to UK viewers, offering around 4000 full-length shows from more than 60 partners.

On October 9, 2009, the third anniversary of the acquisition by Google, Chad Hurley announced in a blog posting that YouTube was serving "well over a billion views a day" worldwide.

Starting in March 2010, YouTube will stream all 60 cricket matches of the Indian Premier League worldwide for free. Making it the world's first[28] free online broadcast of a major sporting event.

On October 9, 2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock. The purchase agreement between Google and YouTube came after YouTube presented three agreements with media companies in an attempt to escape the threat of copyright-infringement lawsuits. YouTube will continue operating independently, with its co-founders and 67 employees working within the company. The deal to acquire YouTube closed on November 13, and was, at the time, Google's second largest acquisition. Google’s February 7th, 2007 SEC filing revealed the breakdown of profits for YouTube’s investors after the sale to Google. At the time of reporting Sequoia Capital’s shares were valued at more than $442 million, Chad Hurley’s at more than $345 million, Steve Chen’s at more than $326 million, and Jawed Karim’s at more than $64 million.