that was important to us. i know that some people have high quality links to their homes. but it was more important to get to more people. but at the same time it was good enough quality you can make out and see the first time videos. and this was three years ago. and since then we have seen the iphone and watching this content. >> was the iphone a big deal for you guys? did it get youtube to the next level? it seems that iphone and that youtube is inherent to that? is that a successful partnership? >> yeah, and apple has an apple toov -- apple tv and panasonic has a tv. and what we see on the

horizon, on the viewing side and content side. on the viewing side, i have been passionate about viewing videos on the phone. i think that most people have a phone, there is seven minutes where you can pull it out and watch these 30 second videos. and the quality is good as anything you can watch. and we are seeing a lot of that on phones. and also being able to capture videos on phones and uploading without going back to your computer. so i think one day being on the beach and being able to capture a video of your family, and sending to the extended family without having to return to your home and computer. >> but the quality, is there a version of hd-tv that we will see on our cell phones soon? >> we started experiencing

on 15 feet back experience on large plasma screens and apple tv and panasonic, with things like that, we always keep around the content that was originally uploaded by the user. and whether better quality transcoders, we are regularly reupdating the library to take advantage of the latest technology. and we convert these videos and retranscode for multiple types. if you are on the phone, you are watching a lower bid rate but what is fitting for your phone from your large tv and different from your browser desk top. >> and again, these videos are stored forever somewhere? you may have just said that, i don't know, i think every

single person should care about this point. by the grace of god, trust me. do you have the capacity, the tech not -- technology allows for permanent storage. and someone will do research and they will do research on images that people can go back to historically? >> there was probably a secret relief when i had the acquisition by google. up to that point with my credit card, but with google's help, they have the largest data centers with the largest group of network computers. and they have been very helpful on the ability to transcode videos faster. because it takes so much

computation power to convert the videos coming in into a format that you can watch on the four or five different formats coming out. and they also have the capacity to handle all the storage requirements we have. that's probably one of the biggest relief on the youtube engineering site to work with the google team. >> do you except as content providers and politics pay to put that content on youtube? is there a day they want to do 25 minutes of extraordinary clear image with all kinds of bells and whistles and that will cost "x" and you will charge "y", is there a concept of that? >> i think we have thought a lot, it has come up in

conversation. but the policies of youtube and it makes business sense, you want to maintain as a platform that people can trust the content. it's sort of a this circular reasoning where people want to go to youtube to watch content, because that's the largest library of content. probably youtube will have than anywhere on the internet. and people that upload content from youtube because they know that people will go there to find the content. and i always mandated in order for that cycle to continue, we also have, and we'll continue to work on this, to reduce the amount of barrier to upload content, to come to youtube

to be as small as possible. on the other side, we have high quality content, and that encourages both sides, to come up for higher quality and to come there. >> and of the library video images and here's the question as we are in a public library and say about the public library in your personal developments and achievements. and let me extend to youtube, do you look at yourself an a public library and to categorize this information? have you thought about that? >> i know that when it comes down to -- this is just one tangent, but we have talked a lot about how to actual organize the ten's of

millions sites. of a user and say 10 minutes of time to watch content. and it may extend to 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. >> 3 a.m. is a loaded phrase, use of words. >> the challenge to the team has been given -- and all the users are different, their preference is different and what they like -- but given 10 minutes and to show that user 10 minutes of content adapted to what they want to watch but something they haven't seen before. there is a lot of research side of google, and the content of the library, but how to most efficiently gather from viewing habits to view this.

>> that's ongoing, when did you start that? now you got, i check out bill clinton this or that and then i have 14,000 reference sites. that's an ongoing revolution and the key words? >> yes, the first thing we did from day 1, was allow people to add tags and a way to describe videos and other people searching for the tags. when beach ball ended, when they search for that, that video comes up. people -- they, not everyone understood the concept of tags. and we want to do location stuff. when you take a video in san francisco, and be able to type in san francisco, and other people can say, i want to watch videos of new year celebration in san francisco. and we get location data and bedroom and bathroom, it made no sense when we wanted

it to achieve what we wanted it to do. but over time, you can gather more information and iphone with location data and video cameras have gps information and more and more stuff is coming from as what the users have to do. we make it as easy for them as possible. and we have this content to sort out on our end. >> right, the youtube phenomena placed more comments into context or taken more comments out of context? >> i think, based on the concept of videos, and it being a 30-second/minute segment, i would argue there is more context with the 30 seconds and minute than a

two-second paragraph in print. and it's easier due to the related videos and browsing, but to view both the comments under the actual text comments, underneath the videos. i think it creates more emphasis on the stuff that goes before, after and surrounding the videos, than a specific quote or specific video absent the community. >> right, what are the future visions or predictions for youtube in terms of connecting people, especially when it applies to the world of youth? who is the average user of youtube, give me a profile? it's not an average person in suit, or is it men or women or singles or married kids with their parents, who

is the youtube user? and i imagine you understand this intimately, how much of my use are you monitoring? and you know, if i spend my time on this or that, and do you share that? >> no, we don't share that. >> all right, i gave you 10 questions at once. but first, who are the typical youtube users? >> it's surprising for people to talk about that, the average user on both sides, the creator of content or the upload of content. i think -- i mean i don't have the hard facts but what i have seen analyzing the quick assessments, it's pretty analogous to the people on the internet, people in that age group

from 16 to 24, 16 to 30 that have grownup using the internet as something they use to communicate and a tool to do research on. and spend hours on the internet on a weekly or daily basis. there is more content from these users by that age group. but it's surprising to me all the time, you have people and there are subcommittees that form on youtube and someone at a particular event and they would discuss these events. and people would reminisce over youtube. and the geographic device,

someone from israel can watch video from japan and the u k. and sometimes you have this in four languages. but there is a community about people that want to share something about this video. >> right, in terms of again that information. it's not shared. >> no, for the same reason, i mean what we do on the youtube site, we will use anomalous data, one thing we have done, for example, if you like to watch soccer videos, we don't want all the videos that we recommend to be only soccer videos. so we do this thing about jumping about different genres, say 80% of the youth that watch soccer videos, enjoy watching any other sport or olympic videos, and

we have preference to nominate these videos and help the users explore there are more types of content on youtube. but all of that is done anomously, we don't care about the users but that someone watched these three pieces and they are related to this, because the user watched all three. >> right, and we talked about this but another question from the audience, how did the sale of google affect youtube, and it has begin you more bandwidth, and i appreciate you talking about this, youtube is an exciting company, and you joined an exciting company. and you thought long and

hard and i am sure they made a good offer, did it change the culture, or are you able to move in the direction that you envisioned and hoped for? you told by the board of director, no, that's too aggressive steve. >> there is one thing when we talk about this, i am reminded by. the beginning of the conversations of the public announcement on wall street about the deal, that happened about five days, thursday to monday evening. and everyone was working around the clock, and to gather the information and the research that the deal would go through. and the announcement was made after wall street closed on monday. and sunday before, we were 50% through the work that needed to be done. we were sitting at the

wilford law firm, a big law firm, and eric schmidt, the c.e.o. of google, and there was no reason he had to be there for a process, it was taken care of. and took chad, the other co-founder and me aside, and to find a room away from everyone else. and told us there would be a lot of friendly people after this acquisition, and they want to help and a lot of cool technologies in google. and you will probably be pulled in a lot of different ways to modernize the site and professional content of the site. but at the end of the day what we are buying youtube is for the idea and the team and how well it was executed. and the reassuring theme, he said there are two things i

want you to do in the next year, and if anyone tries to prevent you from doing this. and first he wanted to use an infinite number of happy users and infinite of good content on the site. to me that was reassuring. and after the acquisition closed, we are still, google has an office in san francisco, in the bay area, and it's a big office and headquarters in mountain view. and youtube is separate. we are kept in san bruno -- >> where? i heard san -- and i thought, a worthy headquarter city. it is, i love san bruno, i do. but what about? where are you living now? >> san francisco. >> exactly. i mean, i mean, can't we

share with you our friends in san bruno. >> san bruno wasn't a first choice for me. >> it wasn't, it's still a worthy place. >> we looked on google map and plotted out, and chad lived in [inaudible] and i lived. >> come, come on, how did you make the choice? >> it was between the bay. >> yeah, you looked at google map and what? you are here and chad is there. >> no, it's a little closer to san francisco. >> yeah it is, that's why it's a worthy place. so, the point i guess as we got off track. that you are separate, and this is important i guess for those, to reflect on the

question asked. you got googles headquarters in mountain view, and moved to a building of 600 employees, not they am counting, and growing by the way. but you guys are a separate unit, physically separate from the rest of the google campuses, up north or down south. >> exactly, and it's a little different from other google acquisitions. normally there was the incorporation of technology and talent that they acquire and building it and figuring out where they best fit in google. the youtube acquisition was conducted differently from other acquisitions at google. we will keep it as a separate entity, we are not sure why youtube is as successful as it is. but whatever it is, we want

to keep it separate. the building is separate, and the cafeteria is different, everything is different. >> is that something that you think will continue? was there an agreement set forth , for five years we will keep it how it is. or a side conversation with eric, we will keep this distribution and -- direction and if we make mistakes. is that more organic to google? >> i hope that it continues independent of google in terms of the direction and terms of priorities. and i think ultimately what pleases a lot of people, is it is storage problems and bandwidth programs, a lot of stuff that we couldn't have done, and benefited from

google being the foundational partner with youtube. but at the same time, we would like to be able to make some decisions that we feel strongly about, where the product is going. so if -- i think and hope that we have proven to google and the rest the company, that this odd relationship is working out. and if we can continue to deliver on the things that we care about, hopefully we can continue to keep the relationship the way it is. >> right. i like this question, it's a little more personal, i don't want to do that to you. but have you changed? this is a big deal, that's heddy stuff, to sit there at the dinner table and you and chad talk about doing videos of cats and dogs and now

changing of democracy. literally, changing the future of not just this country, but leadership in the free world. that's profound, here's the question, have you changed? have you grown? has the growth of youtube has advanced, i mean, how has this changed you? >> i think, thinking about it myself. it's hard to externally look at sort of make observations here. i hope that true values that i held, haven't changed. and sport codes, and i dress better than i did a couple of years ago. but until recently, i was driving the jeep wrangler i have drove for last seven years.

and these speed dial buttons on the phone are the same for the last years. but there are certain things. but an event like this, i wouldn't have gotten invited. [laughter] a couple of years ago and i think as part of that, for whatever it's worth, the messages that i have or what i want to say or the thought i have, it's great to be -- especially as i do traveling in the asian-pacific region and in europe, and to talk about similar things of the impact of youtube in that region, and globally. one, no one cared what i had to say. but two, having that opportunity and for people to listen. it's great. >> what do you fear in that context?

do you fear that this just gets too big? that you lose the edge? you lose the quality of imagination, that desire for discovery? >> well, i want to say, one part of it that's been -- i don't know if i could have done this without the help of chad along the way. because i think, on a pretty much, not daily basis anymore, but several times throughout the week, i would make a call at 9 p.m. and laugh at some things that have gone on, and we can't believe that we were just on the oprah show. we would talk to each other, i can't believe we were on the oprah show today. but it keeps us rooted to be able to laugh about it. and if anyone flies away from the ground, the other pulls them back to the

ground. >> that's great. and i know it's hard to predict, but i imagine your success is bringing a lot of competitors in, a lot of folks that think they can do it as as well or better. i know we are running out of time, how do you frame the competitive environment and the context of what is happening around you? other companies getting into your space, etc.? >> when we shuffled back to 2005, there was the invention of a new market, the notion that you can deliver videos in a way that's cost effective. and to deliver videos, all this stuff of trying to deliver content using various methods. i think we proved that you could deliver videos in a way that's maintained and actually can be a sort of

cost efficient from a server side. and in many regards, that was sort of the fostering and creating a whole new industry where, i think it wasn't just an entering industry where there were a lot of competitors in there, but we created one. after that, i think that people started to enter that industry, but for the last few years, because we were the folks pushing that frontier, and whether this was possible or not, rather than a specific company or product. and we have gotten used to trying to critique ourselves on what we have done, than on the competitors competing different products or services they are providing. >> in the closing moments,

do you anticipate youtube veering into the public policy realm. google was google transit, where you google out the maps, where you figure to go from the east bay to north bay and which line to transfer from and etc. do you envision a day when you go to youtube to figure out how to fill out a form for food stamps or to fill out a form for subsidy for housing or kids to get grants for school? is that something that you guys, we have consumed time on politics, but do you see public policy and youtube being a part of that? >> i haven't done my share

of homework, and looked into this. but my instintive gut is that it's happening in some way. the volume and vertical of the content on youtube and makes up this youtube.com site. if there is a piece of content that's created in a form of video, whether picturial or public policy, if that exists, we have to think how to get people to access this and hopefully ly youtube is that solution. >> in the next 12 months what is driving your passion, and maybe the stock is driven by your comments? >> i think that being able

to watch youtube on mobile devices, pulling out a phone and watching, i said this at end of 2006. and probably recorded somewhere, i said in an interview, i said in 12 months there would be more viewings on mobile devices. and i said this, and i think in a number of months there will be a lot of videos. because i think everyone is carrying around one of these phones. and all the phones have the capability of taking videos and watching videos. i think that everyone in this room 12 months from now will have something that is capable of taking videos and watching them. and i have to think that