YouTube's First Decade Marked by Firsts

As it passes its 10th anniversary, YouTube keeps packing more into its brief lifespan. Here are a few of the biggest highlights of its run:

--Feb. 14, 2005: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, all early employees of PayPal, register the domain name YouTube.com for their online platform for the exploding number of digital videos.

--April 23, 2005: The first video, "Me at the Zoo," (pictured) an 18-second glimpse that delivers exactly what its title promises, is uploaded to the site.

--Oct. 9, 2006: Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. The company has fewer than 70 employees.

--By 2007, it is estimated that the site consumes as much bandwidth as the entire Internet did in 2000.

--May 15, 2007: Viacom sues YouTube for $1 billion, alleging the site, in addition to cat videos and light-saber-wielding fanboys, trafficks in illegally uploaded clips and full episodes of many of its shows, among them South Park and The Daily Show. The suit would finally be settled in 2014, with no money reportedly changing hands.

--Oct. 29, 2011: The company's first set of original channels, part of a $100 million content investment, is unveiled. The outlay gives rise to the first multichannel networks, among them Maker Studios and Machinima.

--Dec. 21, 2012: "Gangnam Style," a music video by Korean pop star Psy, becomes the first video to reach 1 billion views.

--Feb. 25, 2014: YouTube names Susan Wojcicki, an original employee of Google whose garage served as the company's first headquarters, as its CEO.

--April 30, 2014: YouTube launches the "Google Preferred" program in a bid to attract more targeted advertising for its most popular programming.