YouTube has been ingrained into everyone’s life as easily as Wi-Fi. We take it for granted but never spend much time thinking about what we did before it existed. It is the 2nd largest search engine, just behind (you guessed it!) Google, and is still standing strong with an average of 20 million videos being uploaded daily. But is YouTube still a place to watch random internet videos, or has it become far bigger than that? Let’s find out…
A brief history of YouTube
Last year, YouTube celebrated 20 years of its platform, outliving other online video competitors such as IGTV and even music video platform Vevo. The company was founded in February 2005, with its first-ever video “Me at the zoo” being uploaded 2 months after. Skip to 5 years later, and the platform had already shifted from just another video-sharing website to receiving over 2 billion views daily. The platform evolved into a global phenomenon supporting HD, 3D, broadcasting live sports and even offering rentable feature films.
YouTube became the new satellite TV
YouTube has grown far bigger than it was ever expected to, becoming the #1 in streaming watch time in the US for nearly 3 years as of Jan 2026. More households are treating YouTube content as an event, similar to when families’ favourite shows would come on at a certain time and night of the week. Children are able to watch clips (and sometimes full episodes) from their favourite TV shows, uploaded by the same companies that produce them for TV, which would seem like a huge loss in their viewership, but actually is made up by ad revenue and merchandising from the exposure they get on the platform.
YouTube has also become the exclusive home for out-of-market Sunday afternoon games in the US for the NFL, as well as high-profile pay-per-view events like the Floyd Mayweather boxing fights, something that 20 years ago you’d be crazy to think would be watchable online (or even crazier on your phone!).
… but YouTube hasn’t replaced satellite TV
Whilst YouTube has definitely had a boom in viewers globally, Live TV still has its place – it just looks a little different. In the UK, we pay a TV licence that covers the ad-free content broadcast by the BBC. This licence is compulsory to watch or record live TV, regardless of the channel or device you watch it on. A lot of people are starting to cancel their TV licence as they are finding that they are watching more and more streamed content such as Netflix, Disney+ and YouTube. This is largely due to content that is on demand, meaning that you can search for the content you want and watch it when you want to. The BBC had a solution for this by introducing BBC iPlayer in 2007, coincidentally the same year Netflix launched its “Watch now” streaming service.
The number of UK houses who watch their content through app-based platforms such as iPlayer or ITVX has now overtaken those that watch through traditional linear TV, with 52.7% choosing streaming compared to the 48.3% who watch traditionally. Even though it is streamed content, the actual content people watch is largely the same: weekly series, re-runs and the news.
A craving for content, all in one place.
With so much content being broadcast and streamed, a lot of people’s monthly allowances will include some sort of subscription service in their outgoings. Platforms such as Disney+ and Netflix will have content for the whole family, but will only have streaming rights for certain shows, so it’s understandable why households are mixing where they are watching content.
Whilst many homes are app-swapping to find what they are looking for, YouTube now covers a lot of key content areas. YouTube Shorts averages over 200 billion daily views, so it’s no surprise to us that people around the world are craving content. Breaking News now appears on users’ personalised feeds, suggested content is tailored toward what’s found in users’ search history, and short-form content is targeted to get you watching the first video and then continue to scroll for as long as possible.
YouTube is now the source for knowledge online
Whilst this subheading isn’t necessarily a fact, it isn’t far from the truth! When searching for a query on Google, the search engine uses AI to find you the best answer for your query. If it’s a “how to” query, you are likely to be provided a list of video content to help, even providing the moment in the video which answers your question best. There is no surprise that many of these videos are from YouTube, and even less of a surprise that this is part of the reason why YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine on the planet.
For those uploading educational videos to the platform, YouTube gives you all the tools to give the viewer the best chance at finding their answers. These tools include:
- Tags
- Keywords in descriptions
- Option to add videos to channel playlists
- Hashtags
- Timestamps in the video
- A category for viewers to find content easily
Optimising your video content for viewers is similar to optimising your website for users on Google; both need to answer a problem and be clear about what they are offering!
So, what is YouTube going to look like in the next 20 years?
This would normally be the part of the blog where we tell you all the fantastic things we hope YouTube will achieve in the future, but we just don’t think we can do that – and there’s an important reason why we don’t need to!
YouTube is continually integrating new technologies all the time, from VR to using AI for recommending content. YouTube Playables is a completely different way to use the platform, offering streamable mobile games for players such as Cut The Rope, Snake Clash, and Angry Birds Showdown. Even mobile games you play to pass the time can all be played within the YouTube app now! With this knowledge, it’s really hard to predict what YouTube will do next, as it seems that they will and can provide all kinds of entertainment for the masses. If you have a prediction on what YouTube could do in the next 20 years, we’d love to hear them in the comments.