This YouTube trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the platform from its 2005 founding by three ex-PayPal employees to today. There are questions on the first video, the pizzeria office, the $1.65 billion Google acquisition, the CEOs, and the records: the first video to a billion views, the most-viewed and most-subscribed of all time, and the Rewind that became the most-disliked video ever. Creators get their due too, from Smosh and PewDiePie to Ryan's World and MrBeast, along with features like Shorts, Premium and the Creator Award Play Buttons. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who watches YouTube, a third are medium, and the rest ask for dates, figures and behind-the-scenes details that will stump casual viewers. Figures are current to 2025-2026 where a source confirms them. Every answer has been checked against a primary or encyclopaedic source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01YouTube's three founders had all been early employees of which company?
PayPal
They had become wealthy after eBay bought PayPal, and their first office sat above a pizzeria in San Mateo.
Q 02Per Jawed Karim, YouTube's idea partly came from being unable to find clips of which 2004 event?
Janet Jackson's halftime show
He also could not find video of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Q 03The first video ever uploaded to YouTube, on 23 April 2005, was titled what?
Me at the zoo
It is a short clip of Jawed Karim in front of some large animals at San Diego Zoo, filmed by his school friend Yakov Lapitsky.
Q 04In 'Me at the zoo', Jawed Karim stands in front of which animals?
Elephants
His entire commentary is that they have 'really, really, really long trunks'.
Q 05How much did Google pay to acquire YouTube in November 2006?
$1.65bn
Susan Wojcicki, then a Google executive, recommended and managed the purchase.
Q 06YouTube's early HQ sat above a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in which California city?
San Mateo
It is now headquartered in San Bruno and is the second-most-visited website in the world.
Q 07What slogan did YouTube adopt in its early years?
Broadcast Yourself
It was dropped from the logo in 2012.
Q 08Roughly how many hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute, per 2024 figures?
500+
That works out to about 30,000 hours of new video every hour.
Q 09By January 2024, YouTube had reached more than how many monthly active users?
2.7bn
Advertising alone brought in $31.7 billion in 2023.
Q 10Which former Google executive, in whose garage Google was founded, was YouTube's CEO from 2014 to 2023?
Susan Wojcicki
She was Google's 16th employee; Neal Mohan succeeded her in February 2023.
Q 11Who was named YouTube's CEO in February 2023?
Neal Mohan
He had been the platform's chief product officer.
Q 12Which video became the first on YouTube to reach a billion views, on 21 December 2012?
Gangnam Style
Psy's K-pop hit was also the first to pass two billion, in May 2014.
Q 13Which video, by South Korean company Pinkfong, is the most-viewed on YouTube with more than 17bn views?
Baby Shark Dance
It overtook Despacito on 2 November 2020 and became the first video to hit 10 billion views in January 2022.
Q 21For roughly how many days had T-Series been YouTube's most-subscribed channel before being overtaken in June 2024?
805
PewDiePie's earlier reign, from December 2013 to April 2019, lasted about 1,920 days.
Q 22What is the real name of PewDiePie, the first individual YouTuber to pass 100 million subscribers?
Felix Kjellberg
He was born in Gothenburg, built his audience on horror-game Let's Plays, and moved to Japan in 2022.
Q 23What was PewDiePie's October 2018 diss track aimed at the Indian label overtaking him called?
Bitch Lasagna
He followed it with 'Congratulations' when the label finally passed him in 2019.
Q 14Which 2017 Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee video was the first ever to reach six billion views?
Despacito
It held the most-viewed title from August 2017 until Baby Shark passed it in November 2020.
Q 15'Charlie bit my finger', the 2007 viral clip of two English brothers, was sold in 2021 as what?
An NFT
The winning bid of $760,999 came from 3F Music; the video had once been the most-viewed on the site.
Q 16Which YouTuber, real name Jimmy Donaldson, runs the most-subscribed channel on the platform?
MrBeast
He passed 500 million subscribers in 2026 after overtaking T-Series in June 2024.
Q 17The platform's most-subscribed creator broke through with a January 2017 video showing him doing what?
Counting to 100,000
It ran nearly a full day; he was raised in Greenville, North Carolina.
Q 18What target did the 2019 Team Trees fundraiser, fronted by YouTube's most-subscribed creator, clear?
$20m
He later launched the Feastables chocolate brand and the Beast Games competition on Amazon Prime Video.
Q 19How many contestants competed for the $5m prize in Beast Games (Prime Video, December 2024)?
1,000
It was billed as the largest cash prize in television history.
Q 20Which Indian music label became the first channel to reach 100,000,000 subscribers, in May 2019?
T-Series
It had just won a long, meme-fuelled subscriber race with PewDiePie.
Q 24YouTube Rewind 2018 overtook which music video as the most-disliked video on the site?
Justin Bieber's 'Baby'
Rewind ran from 2010 to 2019 and was formally discontinued in October 2021.
Q 25In November 2021, YouTube announced it would hide what from viewers?
Dislike counts
Creators can still see the numbers in their analytics.
Q 26A YouTube channel receives the Gold Creator Award, or Gold Play Button, on reaching how many subscribers?
1,000,000
Silver comes at 100,000, Diamond at 10 million and Red Diamond at 100 million.
Q 27The Red Diamond Creator Award is given to channels that reach how many subscribers?
100,000,000
T-Series was the first to receive one, on 29 May 2019.
Q 28YouTube Shorts launched as a beta in September 2020 in which country, soon after it banned TikTok?
India
It rolled out globally in July 2021 and by late 2025 was drawing over 100 billion views a day.
Q 29In September 2024, YouTube announced that Shorts could be up to how long?
3 minutes
Any vertical video of that length or shorter is now automatically treated as a Short.
Q 30YouTube Premium was first unveiled in November 2014 under what name?
Music Key
It became YouTube Red in October 2015 and Premium in 2018; it passed 125 million subscribers in 2025.