YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees who wanted to create a platform for sharing videos online. The founders recognized the growing popularity of user-generated online videos and saw an opportunity to build a website that made it easy for people to upload, watch, and share videos with others around the world. YouTube has become very popular due to features like showing related videos, allowing videos to be shared on other sites and embedded online, and enabling user subscriptions to video channels.