Irish are a nation of YouTube addicts – 1.1m hits a day

26 Apr 2012

Google VP and chief internet evangelist Vint Cerf and Google global ads chief John Herlihy

An interesting factoid put out by Google’s global head of advertising John Herlihy during a Vint Cerf roundtable is that the Irish punch above their global weight when it comes to downloading material on YouTube.

“YouTube.ie is currently running 1.1m hits a day, for a population of just 4.5m people that’s an incredible impact from a science point of view,” Herlihy told journalists.

Google employs more than 2,000 people in Ireland and in recent months unveiled plans to build a US$75m data centre in Dublin.

YouTube, which just celebrated seven years in existence, currently sees more than 65 hours of video uploaded every minute and about three-quarters of the material comes from outside the US.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in San Francisco in 2005.

Google acquired YouTube in late 2006 for $1.65bn.

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com