You probably think you know the answer. It's Google, right? Well, yeah, mostly. But if you’re looking at a paycheck or a legal document in 2026, things look a little different.
Honestly, the "who owns what" in Silicon Valley is a massive web of holding companies and nested subsidiaries. If you want to be technical—and since we’re talking about a multi-trillion-dollar empire, we should be—YouTube isn't just a "Google thing" anymore.
The Parent Trap: Who actually owns YouTube?
Basically, Alphabet Inc. is the ultimate boss.
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Back in 2015, Google did this massive corporate "rebrand" (read: legal restructuring) where they created a parent company called Alphabet. They did this so they could separate their "boring" profitable stuff, like search and ads, from their "crazy" experimental stuff, like self-driving cars (Waymo) and life-extension research (Calico).
YouTube sits under the Google umbrella, which itself sits under Alphabet. So, when you ask which company owns YouTube, the answer is Google LLC, but the money ultimately flows up to Alphabet Inc. If you go out and buy a share of "Google" stock today (tickers GOOG or GOOGL), you’re actually buying a piece of Alphabet.
The $1.65 Billion "Mistake"
It’s wild to think about now, but when Google bought YouTube in October 2006, people thought they were insane. Like, certifiably nuts.
At the time, YouTube was barely 18 months old. It had 67 employees. It was bleeding cash because hosting video is incredibly expensive, and it was buried in copyright lawsuits. Mark Cuban, the billionaire Shark Tank guy, famously said Google was "crazy" to buy it and that the legal liabilities would kill them.
Google paid $1.65 billion in stock. Fast forward to today, and YouTube is valued at something like **$450 billion to $550 billion** as a standalone entity. It generates over $35 billion a year just in ads. That’s not even counting the billions from YouTube Premium and YouTube TV.
The Real Power: It’s not just about the name
Who really controls the platform? That's a different story.
Even though Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet and Google, and Neal Mohan is the CEO of YouTube (taking over after Susan Wojcicki stepped down in 2023), the real power still sits with two guys you rarely see in the news anymore: Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Through a special class of "super-voting" shares (Class B shares), the two founders of Google still hold over 51% of the voting power in Alphabet. Even though they’ve mostly stepped back from day-to-day operations, they can basically veto anything they don't like. If Alphabet ever decided to spin YouTube off into its own independent company—something regulators have been grumbling about lately—Larry and Sergey would be the ones making the final call.
Why the ownership matters in 2026
You might wonder why any of this corporate jargon matters to you. It matters because of Gemini and the AI wars.
Since YouTube is owned by the same company that owns Google Search and DeepMind, Google has been using YouTube’s massive library of videos to train its AI models. This has sparked a huge debate. Creators are asking: "Wait, did I give you permission to use my face and voice to train a robot that might eventually replace me?"
Because it's a "wholly-owned subsidiary," Google can integrate YouTube data across its services in ways a standalone company couldn't.
A Quick Breakdown of the Hierarchy:
- The Overlord: Alphabet Inc. (The parent company traded on the Nasdaq).
- The Subsidiary: Google LLC (The company that officially "owns" the YouTube brand).
- The Platform: YouTube (The service we all use to watch cat videos or learn how to fix a leaky sink).
- The Boss: Neal Mohan (Current CEO reporting to Google leadership).
The "Spinoff" Rumors
Lately, there’s been a ton of talk about whether Google might be forced to sell YouTube.
Antitrust regulators in the US and Europe are looking at Google’s dominance in advertising. Some experts think that separating YouTube from Google’s ad-buying tools would make the market more "fair." If that ever happens, YouTube could become its own independent company for the first time since 2006.
For now, though, they are joined at the hip. YouTube provides the content and the "social" data, while Google provides the world-class ad tech and the massive servers needed to keep billions of hours of video running smoothly.
What you should do next:
If you're an investor or just a curious creator, keep an eye on Alphabet’s quarterly earnings reports. They usually break out YouTube's ad revenue separately, which gives you a clear look at how the platform is actually doing. Also, if you’re worried about AI and your content, check the YouTube Creator Studio settings—they’ve started adding more "opt-out" or "disclosure" tools for AI-generated content and data usage as of early 2026.
Check your "Data in YouTube" settings in your Google Account to see exactly what information the parent company is tracking across both platforms.