---
title: "Which came first, Google or YouTube?"
description: "Google vs YouTube: Google came first, by 7 years — 1998 against 2005. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/google-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Google or YouTube?

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

1998 — 7 years before YouTube

Google came first, by 7 years. Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park.

## Side by side

|  | Google | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1998 | 2005 |
| Date | 1998-09-04 | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## Google

The date used here is the incorporation, 4 September 1998. Two others compete: the research project called BackRub began at Stanford in 1996, and the google.com domain was registered on 15 September 1997. Google itself has celebrated its birthday on four different September dates over the years, which is a fair indication that no single one is correct. It is younger than Amazon, eBay and Netflix.

## 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, Google or YouTube?

Google, by 7 years — 1998 against 2005.

### When did Google start?

1998. Google Inc. was incorporated in a garage in Menlo Park.

### When did YouTube start?

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

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## Sources

- Typical range compiled from manufacturer specifications — At One Place (/about/)
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]