FIVE years ago this week, YouTube crept on to the internet and quickly became the world's largest online video-sharing site - home to more folksy clips of kittens than you care to imagine.
Today it has a global audience of 400 million - if it were a nation, it would be the world's third-largest - and it could come to dominate viewing in a world where the viewer decides what to watch and when.
As a business, however, it has yet to turn a profit and advertisers regard it as a cheap and potentially risky place to advertise.
Next month's debut of live Indian Premier League cricket matches is the company's first big attempt to make money from its global audience. It will stream live matches to every country outside the US, with owner Google and YouTube splitting the profit from sponsorship and advertising.
To date, it has streamed TV shows from Britain's Channel 4 and a trilogy of Bollywood movies. Its streaming of a U2 concert in Los Angeles in October attracted an audience of 10 million.
The deal to stream live cricket matches is a significant step away from the world of user-generated content. YouTube is the most-visited website in Australia, with 6 million individual visitors a month watching 35 million videos (a number it will not confirm). It's all part of Google's attempt to steer YouTube towards a more controlled internet environment that will attract larger advertisers, who can be confident their carefully crafted ad is not going to run with clips of the world's largest bong-fest.
Shailesh Rao, managing director of Google India says: ''Today we are not just interested in user-generated video, but premium and professional [content] and also long-form video, such as full TV shows.
''We are not trying to change anything about YouTube. In the beginning it was an online destination for video, it just so happened that it caught on with user-generated content, but now premium-content owners are catching on and saying 'I have this show or this movie that I would love that audience to see'."
Although Rao says the IPL deal is an experiment, it is clear YouTube is confident of success.
Consumer electronics companies, car makers, the education sector and financial services advertisers are all on board, although the names of sponsors are yet to be announced. Their brands will appear around YouTube's video player, much like stadium advertising at rugby and football matches. Up to 24 ads for the six sponsors will be shown during each three-hour match.
YouTube believes its ability to offer interactive TV gives it the edge over others offering TV over the internet, an area that is booming. This week Sony said it would offer 15 channels, including YouTube and Yahoo!7's catch-up TV service, through its next-generation Bravia TV sets.
Rather than be a competitor to TV, Rao says YouTube's new services will complement it. He quotes a report from the Internet Advertising Bureau that says after eating, surfing the internet is the second thing people do when watching TV.
