YouTube CEO says they didn’t want to sell to Google

Chad Hurley tells Irish forum they had no choice

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YouTube Chief Executive, Chad Hurley told a Dublin conference yesterday that the company would “love to have stayed independent” but in the end had no choice but to sell to Google.

He likened the first year of YouTube with its phenomenal growth as being inside “a hurricane.”
The Irish American Hurley stated that “We know it was us against the world on all fronts,” said Mr Hurley. “We know our crazy growth was threatening ....“We would love to have stayed independent but if we raised more capital we would just have increased the target on our back.” Hurley stated.

He said YouTube threatened traditional Internet and media companies because  it was taking users away from them both at a phenomenal rate. Today the company has two billions users daily.

Google eventually paid $1.65 billion for the site despite the fact that it was being sued by several companies claiming copyright at the time.

Hurley also had advice for young Irish entrepreneurs starting up sites “Don’t be afraid of changing direction mid-course; be flexible and willing to adapt. We originally planned YouTube to be a video profile site but that changed as things went on.”

The conference titled the Dublin Web Summit will also hear from the founders of twitter and Skype.

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