YouTube launched in 2005 as a video sharing platform, and was acquired by Google (now Alphabet) in 2006. It has built an entire community of creators that run channels dedicated to topics like gaming, tech reviews, and beauty. It also houses news videos and entertainment such as music videos, movie trailers, and clips from late-night TV shows.
YouTube’s rapid growth has not been without problems. YouTubers typically make money from ads that run in front of their videos, but if they break the platform’s rules, their channels and videos can be demonetized. Executives and moderators have worked to combat harassment, misinformation, terrorist propaganda, hate content, and other abuse.
The Verge runs two YouTube channels, The Verge and Verge Science.
The Athletic reports that Disney and Google’s CEOs have become “more involved” in the negotiations nearly two weeks after ESPN, ABC, and other Disney-owned channels went dark on YouTube TV.
Sources tell the outlet that YouTube TV is still trying to determine how much it should pay for Disney’s non-sports networks like Freeform, FX, and National Geographic.
Ahead of one of the biggest games of the NFL season so far, I have a feeing there might be something he wants to talk about. He’ll be on the show at 8PM ET.
Now that the Disney blackout has dragged on for an “extended period of time,” Google will begin handing out the promised credits today. Customers should get an email explaining how to apply the one-time credit to their next bill. But, $20 probably won’t satisfy disgruntled customers who just want to watch SportsCenter.
The traditional late-night TV space has been in something of a dire spot lately, but in all of the chaos, Google and YouTube see an opportunity to get more people watching streaming talk shows like Hot Ones, Good Mythical Morning, and Brittany Broski’s Royal Court.
The standoff between Disney and YouTube started just before midnight on Thursday evening, and unlike the 36-hour tiff in 2021, there’s no sign of an end yet. Disney said it asked Google to turn the networks on for 24 hours for election (and probably football) coverage, but YouTube declined.
There are plenty of other options for customers - election news information is very widely available across other broadcast stations and news networks on YouTube TV, as well as on the main YouTube service, for free. In fact, on the last two U.S. election days, the vast majority of tuned in YouTube TV subscribers chose not to watch ABC.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, just released its Q3 2025 earnings report (pdf), reporting revenue is up by 16 percent from the same period last year, at $102 billion for three months, compared to $88.2 billion in 2024 and $76.6 billion in 2023.
Sundar Pichai:
Our full stack approach to AI is delivering strong momentum and we’re shipping at speed, including the global rollout of AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search in record time... The Gemini App now has over 650 million monthly active users... And we have over 300 million paid subscriptions led by Google One and YouTube Premium.
The social media giants have agreed to boot users under 16 from their platforms by the December 10th deadline, but are still voicing skepticism about the policy’s enforcement and effectiveness.
Correction: YouTube has also said it disagrees with the law, but has not said it will comply.
Reuters: Their comments represented a shift in the social media industry’s response to the law, which is being watched by lawmakers around the world as concern grows about youth mental health. Under the Australian law, platforms must take “reasonable steps” to block users aged less than 16 or face a fine of up to A$49.5 million ($32.5 million).
YouTubers will be soon be able to make use of Adobe Premiere editing tools through a new hub, Create for YouTube shorts. It’s launching soon, both inside the new Premiere mobile app and built directly into YouTube itself.
Expect “exclusive effects, transitions, templates and more.”
We’re very excited to announce that Decoder is now officially on YouTube. So if you prefer to watch and not just listen to your podcasts, you can head over to youtube.com/@decoderpod and subscribe to our new channel, where we’ll post new full-length interviews every Monday.
Our first episode, featuring Zocdoc CEO Oliver Kharraz onstage at the TechFutures conference in New York City, is available now. Check it out, like and subscribe, and tell us what you think.
After about an hour or so of reports from around the world of problems with YouTube, the video streaming platform is back online, and a support forum post confirms the issue is now resolved.
The only problem left now is for people criticizing its newly updated and now more transparent video player.
California is banning streaming ads that are louder than the content around them, bringing streamers in line with broadcast TV. But as some ask whether Big Government has gone too far this time, we say: No, obviously not!
Hoto:
You can just do that? You can just ban things because they’re loud, purposeless and annoying??
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
The airline now offers a selection of ad-free YouTube videos, podcasts, and music playlists in case you forget to download a movie on your phone. That includes content from some of the platform’s most popular creators, including MrBeast, Nick DiGiovanni, Kinigra Deon, Michelle Khare, and others.
MrBeast is the face of the content creator industry; he’s the exception, not the rule, going from being a guy online to a household name. His business is also increasingly not in YouTube videos but in chocolate bars, snack boxes, and more.
Bloomberg goes deep into the finances and strategies of MrBeast’s empire and how the thing he is most known for is losing him money.
I’ve long wanted a way to quickly switch between watching, listening to, and reading a YouTube video, depending on how I want to consume it. Turns out, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg wants the same thing:
Many [videos] are essentially like podcasts, and from a product perspective, I think we need to figure out how to sync and allow seamless movement between watching, listening, or reading transcripts
Mullenweg runs a bunch of businesses that could totally make this happen, just saying. I really hope someone does build it.
The feature will expand to “millions of creators over the coming weeks,” YouTube says.
[blog.youtube]
Nearly one year after announcing its new “Hype” button, YouTube is rolling it out to 39 countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and others. The feature is meant to help highlight smaller creators by letting fans “hype” videos that will then appear on a dedicated leaderboard.
As reported by the BBC and Rhett Shull, some creators have noticed their YouTube Shorts videos look... enhanced, possibly by AI.
YouTube’s Rene Ritchie says the experiment is “using the kind of machine learning you experience with computational photography on smartphones,” not generative AI. What do you call it?
