Not too long ago, I was looking for YouTube TV alternatives after a price hike, and I tested out several different services. I spent time with Fubo TV, Hulu + Live TV, and I even considered giving Sling TV a whirl. That last one never happened because I was happy with Hulu + Live TV. I found that service to be the closest thing to YouTube TV, so I stopped looking. It was perfectly fine for a long time, but it fell victim to the same trap as YouTube TV — rising prices.
Hulu + Live TV has been $90 a month for a little while now, and I just chalked it up as that being the price I’m forced to pay. I didn’t realize it was the most expensive live TV service. I started shopping around again, and I noticed that YouTube has quite a few plans to pick from now, and they’re all cheaper than Hulu + Live TV. Instead of getting the base plan for $83 a month, I opted for the Sports plan for $65. It’s not even that I’m super interested in sports, but I saw that I got all the channels I wanted for that price. It includes all the local stations like NBC, FOX, and CBS, and it also comes with some other options, like TBS, TNT, and Tru TV. I figured that covered all of my bases, and I get to save quite a bit of money compared to Hulu + Live TV. I can’t believe I didn’t do this earlier.
YouTube and its history
Trivia challenge
From its humble beginnings to global domination — how well do you know the world’s biggest video platform?
HistoryFoundersMilestonesVideosRecords
Who are the three co-founders of YouTube?
Correct! Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in 2005. All three were former PayPal employees, which gave them the technical and entrepreneurial foundation to build the platform.
Not quite. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim — three former PayPal employees who launched the site in 2005. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are associated with Google, not YouTube.
In what year was YouTube officially launched to the public?
Correct! YouTube launched publicly in November 2005 after a brief beta period earlier that year. The domain YouTube.com was registered on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2005.
Not quite. YouTube launched to the public in 2005, with the domain registered on February 14 of that year. It exited beta and opened to everyone in November 2005, quickly exploding in popularity.
What was the very first video ever uploaded to YouTube?
Correct! “Me at the zoo” was uploaded on April 23, 2005, by co-founder Jawed Karim. The 18-second clip shows him standing in front of elephants at the San Diego Zoo and is still live on the platform today.
Not quite. The first video ever uploaded to YouTube was “Me at the zoo” by co-founder Jawed Karim, posted on April 23, 2005. It’s a simple 18-second clip filmed at the San Diego Zoo and remains one of the most historically significant uploads on the platform.
Which company acquired YouTube in October 2006, and for how much?
Correct! Google acquired YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock. At the time, YouTube was just 18 months old, making it one of the most remarkable early acquisitions in tech history.
Not quite. Google purchased YouTube in October 2006 for $1.65 billion in an all-stock deal. It was a landmark moment in internet history, completed when YouTube was barely 18 months old and already dominating online video.
Which music video was the first on YouTube to reach one billion views?
Correct! “Gangnam Style” by Psy became the first YouTube video to hit one billion views in December 2012. It was so popular it reportedly exposed a bug in YouTube’s view counter, which wasn’t designed to handle numbers that large.
Not quite. “Gangnam Style” by Psy made history as the first YouTube video to reach one billion views in December 2012. It was so massively viral that YouTube had to upgrade its view counter from a 32-bit to a 64-bit integer to handle the numbers.
What major feature did YouTube introduce in 2012 that dramatically changed how creators earned money?
Correct! In 2012, YouTube significantly expanded its Partner Program, opening AdSense monetization to all eligible creators with one-click sign-up. This democratized earning potential on the platform and helped fuel the rise of professional YouTubers.
Not quite. The big monetization shift in 2012 was YouTube opening its Partner Program broadly, allowing any eligible creator to monetize with a simple AdSense integration. Before this, monetization was invite-only, so expanding it changed the creator economy forever.
YouTube faced a landmark copyright legal battle in 2010. Which media giant sued YouTube for $1 billion over user-uploaded content?
Correct! Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube and Google in 2007, claiming the platform knowingly hosted copyrighted content. The case dragged on for years before being settled in 2014, and it played a major role in shaping YouTube’s Content ID system.
Not quite. It was Viacom that sued YouTube and Google for $1 billion in 2007, alleging widespread copyright infringement. The lawsuit was eventually settled in 2014 and had a huge influence on how YouTube developed its Content ID copyright detection system.
As of recent years, approximately how many hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute?
Correct! Around 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every single minute, a figure that highlights just how enormous the platform’s scale has become. That means more content is added in one day than any human could watch in several lifetimes.
Not quite. The staggering figure is approximately 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. This monumental volume of content is why YouTube relies so heavily on algorithms, automated moderation, and Content ID systems to manage what’s on the platform.
Your Score
/ 8
Thanks for playing!
I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon
The value is just too good
I feel like I’m going crazy by saying this, but YouTube TV is the cheapest way for me to watch what I want to watch by far. This was definitely not the case a year ago. Prices of live TV services have been going up for years, so I shouldn’t just single out YouTube TV. The big thing is the ability to pick and choose the channels that I want. No, I can’t go through a list and manually select them, but I’m glad there’s finally a way to pay for a cheaper package and skip a swath of channels I’ll never put on.
The unfortunate thing is that price hikes are always coming, so I don’t know how long prices can stay like this. It might feel like a long time ago, but there was a time when YouTube TV was just $45 a month, and it made cutting the cord very appealing. These days, it feels like the only real difference is not having a cable box in my house.
On top of the lower price, there’s something about the YouTube TV interface that feels natural to me. It has a lot in common with Hulu + Live TV, but I like that I can open up the YouTube TV and go straight to my guide. For Hulu + Live TV, I have to open the actual Hulu app and navigate to the live section. I wonder how things will shake up once the Hulu app finally integrates with Disney+ fully, but I won’t be around to find that out.
For the time being, I’m happy with what I have. I have multi-view, all the channels I need, and an app that works across all of my devices and my computer. I’m sure the tides will shift in favor of another service down the road, but YouTube TV sits on top for now.
Live TV is slowly losing its value
Hopefully, I won’t always need it
There has been a slow shift to putting live TV on streaming services. If you look at the NFL and NBA rights, you’ll see them scattered all over the place. In order to watch everything, you need a subscription to Peacock, Prime Video, Netflix, and your live TV service. With the way things are going, live TV might some day be entirely on streaming apps.
Wildly popular shows like Dancing with the Stars used to be exclusive to ABC, but now a Disney+ subscriber can watch it without having a live TV subscription. If Live TV keeps it up with the rising subscription costs, I can see many people just throwing in the towel. When YouTube TV and company lost the rights to regional sports networks, I didn’t go crawling back to cable. I just put up with not being able to watch my local teams, and I never even paid for the standalone app. I can’t justify paying $20 a month to watch a single sport, and I don’t know of many people who are.
I have the option of grabbing an indoor antenna to watch my local team for the upcoming season, and that’s just a one-time buy. Sure, there’s no DVR option, but I find it much more appealing to make a one-time purchase instead of a monthly subscription. Subscriptions have been eating me alive, so getting some relief where I can is, well, a relief.
