Who developed YouTube Instant in 2010?

Feross Aboukhadijeh developed YouTube Instant in 2010. He built the real-time YouTube search engine while he was a 19-year-old Stanford student and Facebook software-engineering intern.

The project began as a bet with his college roommate: Aboukhadijeh said he could create real-time YouTube search in less than an hour. He lost the bet because the initial version took about three hours, followed by additional time for polishing. The site used YouTube's API and began playing a likely video as users typed.

YouTube Instant was modeled on Google Instant, which had popularized predictive, real-time search. Its launch quickly attracted attention, and YouTube CEO Chad Hurley publicly offered Aboukhadijeh a job. The offer became one of the most widely reported parts of the story, but it does not make Hurley the developer.

A common mix-up is confusing YouTube Instant with Google's later search features or with YouTube itself. YouTube Instant was an independent project created by Aboukhadijeh, not a product originally developed by YouTube's co-founders.