Youku
Youku Tudou Inc. (formerly Youku Inc.), doing business as Youku (Chinese: 优酷; lit. 'excellent (and) cool'), is a video hosting service based in Beijing, China. It operates as a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding Limited.
Screenshot Screenshot of Youku home page | |
| Type of business | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
Type of site | Video hosting service |
| Available in | Chinese English (Global edition only) Vietnamese (Global edition only) Thai (Global edition only) Indonesian (Global edition only) Spanish (Global edition only) Malay (Global edition only) Portuguese (Global edition only) |
| Founded | March 2006 |
| Headquarters | |
| Founder(s) | Victor Koo |
| Industry | Internet |
| Services | Online services |
| Revenue | US$649.5 million (2014) |
| Employees | 2,104 |
| Parent | Alibaba Group |
| URL | www www |
| Registration | Optional (required to upload and/or comment on videos) |
| Launched | 21 December 2006 |
| Current status | Active |
| Youku | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 优酷 | ||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 優酷 | ||||||
| Literal meaning | excellent (and) cool | ||||||
| |||||||
Youku has its headquarters in the Sinosteel Plaza in Haidian District, Beijing.
On 12 March 2012, Youku reached an agreement to merger with Tudou in a stock-for-stock transaction, the new entity being named Youku Tudou Inc. In 2014, it had more than 500 million monthly active users, with 800 million daily video views.
Youku is one of China's top online video and streaming service platforms, along with iQiyi, Sohu, LeTV, Tencent Video, PPTV, 56.com and Funshion. However, Youku's domination in the Chinese market was toppled by its competitor Baidu's iQiyi in 2015.