Friday, August 16, 2013

Microsoft and Google at "War" over YouTube app for Windows Phone


It would seem something taken from a Daily Show funny sketch: Google has no interest in developing a YouTube app for Windows Phone; Microsoft creates its own app; Google says it violates its terms as it doesn't show ads and allows video downloads, and blocks it; MS and Google say they work together in a new app; MS launches a new app with ads and no downloads; all seems to be well... until the very next day Google blocks it once again.

Microsoft it now complaining Google is being "mean"  and it doesn't give them access to the APIs needed to properly implement their ads. YouTube says it advised Microsoft to use HTML5 to create an App where YouTube could take care of that. But MS insists using HTML5 is unfeasible right now, and points to the fact that neither one of the official YouTube apps for iOS and Android is using HTML5, and are coded using native code - besides, most 3rd party YouTube apps also use workarounds to bypass the apparently restricted public APIs.

No matter which side is "right", there's no doubt that the ones that will "pay" for this are the users - that would prefer both companies to act as grown ups and get their act together and sort things out. MS has a lot to regret about their "scroogled" anti-Google campaigns; and have done more than their share of monopolistic abuse over the decades; but Google was also once known as being the "do no evil" company. I sure wouldn't like to see those roles end up being reversed in the coming years.

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