---
title: "Which came first, Netflix or YouTube?"
description: "Netflix vs YouTube: Netflix came first, by 8 years — 1997 against 2005. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/netflix-vs-youtube/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Netflix or YouTube?

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

1997 — 8 years before YouTube

Netflix came first, by 8 years. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

## Side by side

|  | Netflix | YouTube |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1997 | 2005 |
| Date | 1997-08-29 | 2005-02-14 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. | The domain was registered; the first video followed in April. |

## Netflix

Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.

## 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, Netflix or YouTube?

Netflix, by 8 years — 1997 against 2005.

### When did Netflix start?

1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

### 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]