Webdriver Torso

A typical Webdriver Torso slide. Quality loss is visible in the text and along the rectangle edges.

Webdriver Torso is a YouTube automated account created by Google in March 7, 2013^[1] that frequently posts videos showing simple slides accompanied by beeps, in order to test YouTube's performance. The channel brought public attention in 2014, when it became a source of speculation for viewers who discovered it and noted its unusual nature, as well as three atypical videos featuring jokes. It remained a popular mystery until YouTube humorously acknowledged that the channel exists as an internal testing utility.

Content

Since September 23, 2013, the channel uploads videos with a time interval usually between 1 and 15 minutes, sometimes up to one hour, summing hundreds of thousands of videos as of 2016. With the exception of three, all videos follow the set of standards described below.

Most of the videos are 11 seconds long, although some are also around 1 minute,^[2] 5 minutes, or 25 minutes long.^[3] They are slideshows showing slides about 1 second long each. Each slide consists of a solid white background overlapped by two solid colour opaque rectangles, one red and the other blue. Both rectangles have a random size, shape, and position on the slide. When the two overlap, the red rectangle always appears over the blue one, and on rare occasions, the red rectangle completely covers up the blue one. Each slide has a random computer-generated wave tone. In the corner of each video, it says "aqua.flv - slide (number with four digits)". Early videos were called "aqua",^[4] then were changed to "tmp" followed by random characters.

Joke videos

The channel has three videos which violate the channel's standards, featuring instead internal references or jokes. One of them, tmpRkRl85, appears a usual video until the red rectangle becomes a silhouette of Rick Astley dancing in the second half of the video.^[5] The video "00014" is footage recorded in Paris that showed the Eiffel Tower being lit up.^[5] At the end of the video, the camera is put down, and the Webdriver Torso Facebook page is visible for a few frames.^[5] The last one, "0.455442373793" is only viewable in France, requires a payment of 1.99 euro to watch, and is only payable with a French credit card. It shows an episode of the American adult cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force dubbed in Spanish.^[6]

Subscriptions

The channel subscribed to eight other channels. Six of them are category channels made by YouTube about music and news. The others are the channel of the German label Aggro Berlin and the channel of the Joueur du Grenier a French channel based on humorous retro gaming videos. Over 91 thousand accounts have subscribed to Webdriver Torso.

Colours

Google has used the colour red because it is the hardest colour to see through a monitor. They used blue because it is the hardest colour to see. All the time they are checking to see that these colours are visible and are appearing correctly.

Sounds

They use sounds to check if anything has been distorted or not functioning properly.

Speculation

Prior to YouTube's confirmation of the channel as a test channel, there was some speculation about the identity and content of the videos. Hypotheses about the channel's purposes included spy messages,^[7] contact by extraterrestrial life-forms,^[8] construction plans^[9] and a Cicada 3301 recruitment program.^[10]

Unexplained references

Despite Google having clarified the channel's purpose, this did not explain the seemingly humorous references contained in some of the videos. These include the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode, the Rick Astley silhouette, and the Eiffel Tower footage. In this last, Webdriver Torso at one time commented "Matei is highly intelligent". The "Matei" in question is unknown, but Basarab Matei,^[11] Matei Mancas, Matei Gruber, and Matei Ciocarlie^[12] have all been suspected. The "Matei" comment was apparently removed at some later time.

Solving the mystery

The channel was later revealed to be a quality testing channel (see below).

Soggetto Ventuno's discoveries

An Italian blogger named "Soggetto Ventuno" discovered that Webdriver Torso belongs to a network of accounts called "ytuploadtestpartner_torso".^[5] Ventuno then discovered some other accounts with similar videos, many of which were pulled or made private after Ventuno's investigations were published.^[5] The network linked to a Facebook page and a Twitter page, which have now both been taken down.^[5] The Facebook page had mentioned "Johannes Leitner", a Google Zürich employee.^[5] Leitner was friends with another employee, "Matei Gruber".^[5] "Matei" was mentioned on 00014 (see above).^[5] Ventuno then compared scenes from pulled videos with Google Zürich photos, and noticed matching things, indicating that the pulled videos were recorded at Google Zürich,^[5] and that the channel and all similar channels were run from Google Zürich.

Purpose of videos

The videos are made to test YouTube video quality. After creation, the videos are uploaded to YouTube. The uploaded videos are then compared to the videos before they were uploaded, to see how much quality was lost.

YouTube's reply

When YouTube was asked about Webdriver Torso, they replied: "We're never gonna give you uploading that's slow or loses video quality, and we're never gonna let you down by playing YouTube in poor video quality. That's why we're always running tests like Webdriver Torso."^[5] This is a reference to Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up".

Easter eggs

When "Webdriver Torso" is searched into Google or YouTube, the Google logo and YouTube and the search results will both look like a Webdriver Torso video.^[13] Another Easter egg is that in the Android L developer builds, the Android Version Easter Egg is a reference to Webdriver Torso videos. Similar channels such as Webdriver Waist, and Webdriver YPP exist on YouTube as well.

External links

• Webdriver Torso channel on YouTube

See also

• Unfavorable semicircle

References