YouTube App Has Google And Microsoft Throwing Punches Over HTML5
User of the Windows Phone mobile operating system glad that the Microsoft-made YouTube app was reinstated recently with approval by Google will be disappointed this afternoon: it's gone again. Now the two companies are tossing punches online, releasing statements in kind over the reasons for their continued dispute. It would appear that the whole mess comes down to one coding issue: HTML5.
In a statement released this morning with The Verge, Google suggested that Microsoft had "not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience." Instead they said, Microsoft had "re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service." This is a similar suggestion to what was said when the original YouTube app was released by Microsoft without advertisements.
This was well after Microsoft suggested – and not for the first time – that Google was intentionally harming Windows Phone with FTC investigations. It was then that Microsoft Vice President Dave Heiner suggested Google tell YouTube developers prevent Windows Phone from having a full-fledged experience as delivered with iOS and Android.
On the 13th of August – just two days ago, Windows Phone received the OK for a re-launch of the Microsoft-made YouTube app. It wasn't long then – less than two days later, that is – that Microsoft has once again found its iteration of YouTube blocked from service.
It's this afternoon, then when Vice President & Deputy General Counsel for Microsoft David Howard makes direct accusations of Google creation a situation in which Microsoft could not possibly appease them, one that, again, puts Android and Apple's iOS in a place where Windows Phone cannot be.
"There was one sticking point in the collaboration. Google asked us to transition our app to a new coding language – HTML5. This was an odd request since neither YouTube's iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5. Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility.
At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps." – David Howard for Microsoft
It's also said by Howard that Google claims they cannot serve ads based on conditions imposed by content creators with the version of the app Microsoft created. According to Howard, Microsoft's app "serves Google's advertisements using all the metadata available to us" and cannot hope to serve ads based on the conditions imposed by the content creators Google speaks of without "whatever information iPhone and Android get" – again, Howards words.