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by HWR_14 1074 days ago
The acquisition by Google happened 18 months into YouTubes existence. It's been 18 years since then. I don't know if you really recall what a site was like 18 years ago.

Besides that, what Google provided was hosting infrastructure and legal protection. Otherwise they would have been sued into nothing and couldn't have afforded to serve video.
2 comments
ghaff 1074 days ago
Early on YouTube was basically a repository of commercial copyrighted material. Widespread home video was not really a big thing at the time.
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Forgeties79 1074 days ago
Honestly I did not realize that acquisition happened so early in YT’s existence. That’s on me I suppose.
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HWR_14 1074 days ago
It's understandable. It was originally allowed to be its own thing. There were several iterations of it being brought into the Google fold, and it would be easy to mistake any of those for the acquisition event.
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