On October 9, 2006, Google officially announced the acquisition of YouTube for a value of up to 1.65 billion USD. At that time, this decision sparked much controversy in the technology and investment circles.
At that time, the business community had many doubts when Google spent a huge amount of money to acquire a platform that many people thought was worthless and difficult to achieve success in the future.
In 2002, two sculpture students at Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Vy Vy and Hoang Nghe Hinh, formed a lip-syncing group just for entertainment. They chose to lip-sync songs that were "trending" at that time.
No one expected that their humorous lip-syncing video based on the song "As long as you love me" by the Backstreet Boys would inadvertently create a big impact, changing both listening and watching music habits later.
The video of 2 Chinese students then caught the eye of Susan Wojcicki - who was then in charge of Google Video.
In a 2015 interview, she said that it was the love for that video that contributed to Google's decision to acquire YouTube for 1.65 billion USD in 2006.
Reality has proven that Google's decision to acquire YouTube was a right and strategic step.
YouTube has now become the world's largest video platform and Google's "money-printing machine".
Not only dominating the digital content field, YouTube also helps Google expand its influence to advertising, entertainment and online media.
According to Alphabet's latest financial report, YouTube alone brought in more than 60 billion USD in revenue in 2025 from advertising and paid services such as YouTube Premium, YouTube TV.
This figure even exceeds the annual revenue of many major media corporations in the world, showing that the deal once considered "crazy" has become one of the most successful investments in technology history.
Thus, music has also become one of the decisive reasons for Google to spend money to buy YouTube. The song "As long as you love me" was loved for a long time afterwards, viewed and listened to in many different versions on YouTube.
As of now, Bad Bunny is the artist with the highest total views on YouTube with more than 87 billion views across the platform.
Notable songs that helped him create this impressive achievement include "Te Boté (Remix)", "Mayores", "No Me Conoce (Remix)", "Dákiti", "Tití Me Preguntó" and "Me Porto Bonito" - all reaching from hundreds of millions to more than 2 billion views.
Bad Bunny's success not only affirms the global appeal of Latin music but also shows his strong influence on the current YouTube platform.
Not only Bad Bunny, a series of international stars such as Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Rihanna, BTS or Blackpink also own YouTube channels with billions of views.
This shows that YouTube today is not just a simple video sharing platform but has become an important bridge to help artists connect with audiences around the world.
Music is now not only the reason Google sees the enormous potential of YouTube, but also has its own "powerful" world on YouTube.
From simple lip-syncing videos to professional MVs, music is always the content with the strongest spreading ability and easiest to connect human emotions.
Google understands that when millions of people around the world search, listen to and share their favorite songs every day, YouTube will not only be a video viewing website but also become the "global stage" of the music industry.
Over time, the hit songs of artists such as Justin Bieber, Rihanna, BTS or Blackpink have continuously brought in billions of views, helping YouTube attract a huge number of users worldwide.
It is music that has retaken viewers, generated huge advertising revenue and turned YouTube into the world's leading entertainment platform with commercial value today.
