When it started, YouTube was considered a fun internet distraction. These days it’s seen as an irresistible force. The video-sharing platform’s importance to the revenue and roadmap of its parent has never been more significant. In 2024, ad sales hit $36.1 billion—more than 10% of the $350 billion Alphabet reported for the period. That’s almost as much as Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal and Fox generated from ads combined.
But YouTube isn’t just a money-maker. The 20-year-old company sits atop a unique archive of 20 billion videos that can be used to train generative artificial intelligence applications, including those able to produce moving images. In June, CNBC reported that Alphabet’s other well-known brand—Google—has directly benefitted from this, though it says its AI endeavors are meant to benefit content creators rather than (as many of them suspect) replace them. In this Bloomberg Originals mini-documentary, we explain how YouTube evolved from scrappy startup to streaming behemoth, and how TikTok is battling it for the loyalty of young users.