In 2006 YouTube CEO, Susan Wojicicki was overseeing Google video and in charge of its acquisitions. The search giant was looking at YouTube, then a small unprofitable Silicon Valley startup, when Wojicicki stumbled upon a video of two boys in China lipsynching to the Backstreet Boys “As Long As You Love Me.”
This crazy video of the two boys outrageously lip-syncing while their room-mate did the homework in the background was hilarious to the Google exec, she said on-stage at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Next Gen Summit.
Here is the video which forced Google to take over YouTube :
“That was the video that made me realize that ‘Wow, people all over the world can create content, and they don’t need to be in a studio,'” Wojcicki said.
A light bulb went off in her head, and six months after the video was posted, Wojcicki led Google through the $1.65 billion acquisition of the video sharing site. She’s loved YouTube since she watched this video, and was named its CEO in February 2014.
