The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has acquired the first-ever video uploaded on Youtube, as well as an early home page, to its collection.
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim – all of whom were former PayPal employees. Just two months later, the first ever video with the title “Me at the zoo” was uploaded from Jawed’s channel on April 23, 2005. Over the years, the video has become an important part of the internet lore.
Victoria & Albert Museum spokesperson stated that the museum had not just acquired the video itself, but also the original front-end code of the website. They also acquired advertisement data on the site between December 2006 and January 2007. With it, the museum and YouTube’s own team were able to recreate one of the oldest versions of YouTube’s home page.
A blog post about the acquisition said: “As a cultural and social phenomenon, the YouTube watch page is not only emblematic of Web 2.0 and the rise of user-generated content, but also a prescient sign of what would become the creator economy and platform capitalism. It reveals the ways in which early design decisions would become central to broader economic and cultural systems that define contemporary life.”
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YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion in November 2006, less than 2 years since its inception and one of the earliest acquisitions by the tech giant. It was also their most profitable. As of 2025, YouTube was estimated to be worth more than $500 billion alone, accounting for one-third of the total valuation of Alphabet (Google’s parent company).
