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Youtube founding date: February 15, 2005

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 16, 2026February 16, 2026

YouTube’s founding date was February 15, 2005. Its founders were Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, three early employees of PayPal. It was their next project after Ebay purchased Paypal and left the three with a windfall. On October 9, 2006, YouTube was purchased by Google for $1.65 billion. The name is a reference to the cathode ray tube that was the main component in televisions until the early 2010s. A common nickname for TV during the CRT era was “The Tube.”

YouTube was not the first video-sharing site on the Internet. Vimeo launched in November 2004, though that site remained a side project of its developers from CollegeHumor so it never attained Youtube’s success.

What happened to Prodigy Internet

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 13, 2026February 13, 2026

Prodigy was a 1980s online service that later morphed into an Internet service provider. It survived into the early 2000s but faded as its business model disappeared. Here’s what happened to Prodigy Internet.

Deja News: Google’s first acquisition

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 12, 2026February 12, 2026

Google’s first acquisition was a company called Deja News. It was a small acquisition compared to things that were to come, but it was a synergistic and strategic acquisition at the time. Google acquired Deja News on Feb. 13, 2001.

The last Sony CRT ever made

Dave Farquhar CRTs February 11, 2026February 11, 2026

On February 14, 2006, Sony announced its final CRT television, the KD-34XBR970. The last Sony CRT TV was a 34-inch model, with high definition and a 16:9 screen. So it wasn’t what we typically think of when it comes to CRTs. Or maybe we should say televisions. Plural. Because at the same time, Sony also released three conventional 4:3 standard definition models: the 36-inch KD-36FS170, 32-inch KV-32FS170 and 27-inch KV27FS170.

Why Pets.com failed and became a dotcom joke

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 10, 2026February 10, 2026

Pets.com was a pioneering Internet startup selling pet food. Amazon even owned a significant stake in the company. So why did it stop taking orders in November 9, 2000, become the butt of a Superbowl ad joke the next year, and you see chewy.com packages all over your neighborhood instead?

Buy.com’s Feb 2000 IPO

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 9, 2026February 9, 2026

Buy.com was founded in 1997 by Scott Blum. It was an e-commerce site whose gimmick was taking the concept of a loss leader to an extreme, trying to subsidize the low prices by selling advertising. In 2010, it was purchased by Japanese company Rakuten, rebranded as Rakuten.com, and ultimately shut down in 2020, ending a 23-year run.

The first computer chip

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 6, 2026February 6, 2026

The integrated circuit, or computer chip, reached a major milestone 66 years ago this week, when Jack Kilby, an engineer at Texas Instruments, filed a patent for “miniaturized electronic circuits,” a multi-transistor device on Feb. 6, 1959.

What happened to Conner hard drives

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 5, 2026February 5, 2026

Conner Peripherals was founded June 17, 1985 by Seagate Technology co-founder Finis Conner, in San Jose. On Sep. 20, 1995, Conner agreed to merge with Seagate in a deal worth $1 billion. The deal closed February 5, 1996. At the time of the merger, Conner was the second largest hard drive manufacturer, behind Seagate.

Radio Shack’s 2015 bankruptcy

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 4, 2026April 4, 2026

On February 5, 2015, Radio Shack filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy after posting losses 11 quarters in a row and accumulating $1.4 billion in debt. While not officially the end of Radio Shack, the Radio Shack that still exists today is a shadow of its pre-2015 self. At one time, Radio Shack was a retail giant, with about as many stores as McDonald’s, with a high percentage of them in small towns. A small town was about as likely to have a Radio Shack as a McDonald’s, and might not have both.

When Bill Gates claimed to work for $2 an hour

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing February 3, 2026February 3, 2026

The most popular software product for the MITS Altair 8800 computer was Altair Basic, the first Microsoft product. But there was a problem. Only about 10 percent of Altair owners paid for Altair Basic. On February 3, 1976, Bill Gates decided to do something about it. He wrote a letter titled An Open Letter to Hobbyists in which, among other things, he said he made around $2 an hour writing Altair Basic.