Abstract
In February 2005, YouTube was created by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, two young PayPal employees who were trying to figure out a good solution to share video clips with their friends. Since then, YouTube has become the leading video-sharing website. Google bought the enterprise for $1.65 billion in October 2006. At that time, YouTube was still unprofitable, and many commentators pointed out that this acquisition, especially at such a high price, was a big mistake. Today, the future of YouTube still seems uncertain in the volatile Web 2.0 environment, but it is brighter than what it was one year ago: "YouTube could be a new NBC, or another Napster," Heather Green wrote in BusinessWeek.
