YouTube, which celebrates its fifth birthday this month, has reached another milestone: 2 billion views a day.
That was nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major US television networks combined, a message on the official YouTube blog said.
The first beta version of YouTube.com was launched in May five years ago with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world.
"Over time, these aspirations have created a vibrant and inspiring community that helped transform a murmur of interest into something far greater than any of us ever could have imagined," the YouTube team said.
Every minute, 24 hours of new content is downloaded, and watching everything ever put on the site would take about 1700 years.
Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $US1.65 billion, but analysts have doubts the site is turning a profit given the enormous expense of hosting and streaming all that video across the internet.
Forbes.com reported that Googlewasn't at all forthcoming about whether YouTube makes any money - or whether the operation will ever earn back the purchase price.
YouTube is the third most popular website on the internet, behind Google.com and Yahoo.com
