---
title: "Which came first, Amazon or YouTube?"
description: "Amazon vs YouTube: Amazon came first, by 11 years — 1994 against 2005. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/amazon-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Amazon or YouTube?

**Which came first, Amazon or YouTube?: Amazon**

1994 — 11 years before YouTube

Amazon came first, by 11 years. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

## Side by side

|  | Amazon | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1994 | 2005 |
| Date | 1994-07-05 | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## Amazon

Amazon was incorporated on 5 July 1994, originally as Cadabra, and the website opened in July 1995 selling only books. The 1994 incorporation date is used here because it is the company's own founding date; if you mean the shop, 1995 is the answer. Either way it predates Google by three or four years and eBay by about a year.

## YouTube

The youtube.com domain was registered on Valentine's Day 2005, the first video — "Me at the zoo", 19 seconds of a co-founder at San Diego Zoo — was uploaded on 23 April, and the site opened publicly in the winter. Google bought it in November 2006 for $1.65 billion, about twenty months after the domain was registered. It is younger than Facebook by a year and older than Twitter by one.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Amazon or YouTube?

Amazon, by 11 years — 1994 against 2005.

### When did Amazon start?

1994. Jeff Bezos incorporated the company in Washington state.

### When did YouTube start?

2005. The domain was registered; the first video followed in April.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]