So I wonder, will I perhaps be able to watch talks and other videos on an airplane now using YouTube Go? Which subset of functionality will work on this soon-to-be-abandoned app? Does it even address any of the issues that content creators, Google and us users have with the platform?
The owners of YouTube do not have it in their best interest to provide you with flexible, no-nonsense tools.
I was looking for a youtube video downloader a week or two back, but was really struggling to find one that wasn't spamware.
And offline stuff won't happen on the main Youtube app because politics.
I think each of these address a very different problem, and completely disagree with him. Trying to bundle all of these things into one big app will just make the app bloated and development painful. Youtube at this point has many different uses (average length videos, live streams, music/audio) and trying to have a one size fits all app is not necessarily the right way to go.
Youtube GO is meant for people who live in areas with poor connectivity. Again, having them download a big 100mb bloated app is not the right solution. On the other hand, people with LTE don't care about the download size and locally sharing videos, so why put that in the same app? Same thing with trying to put Chatting/Livestream notification into the Youtube app, or trying to hack a music player into it.
"YouTube Red isn’t available in your country." Which of course somehow has to mean I'm not allowed to watch non-monetized videos offline.
Plus, the "main" YouTube app still insists on displaying a small video with tons of crap around it, so that I have to hunt for the tiny and easy to miss "full-screen" button. I clicked on the video to, you know, watch video, not read the captions under thumbnails from all the other videos YouTube thinks I might want to watch.
Google on the other hand refuses to even show us Podcasts category on Play music. Podcasts.
For that matter, since an offline video eliminates the buffering problem, I'd love to have the "playback speed" feature in the mobile app. The web version of YouTube supports changing the playback speed to 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x, but the mobile version doesn't.
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.schabi.newpi...
I threw it together (over a few hours) simply because I like watching stuff on youtube at 1.5x speed and the android app does not allow you to do it (whereas if you use VLC to play the downloaded video, you can increaseplayback speed)
It's also available on the play store [2] with youtube downloads disabled by default
[1] https://github.com/zeronickname/VideoDownloader
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.me.gman.get...
However, at least in this case, they're taking a step in the right direction, no matter how small.
Do you think they'll be blocking monetization on that?
No, it's not evidence, but until serious enforcing happens, it's the best I can do, and I think it's a reasonable assumption to make.
I actually don't think YouTube Red was necessarily a bad idea: People get to skip ads, and play videos offline/with their phone locked. We use that money to pay creators and fund premium content.
To counter, if you want to support the creators, it's better to subscribe via Vessel or Patreon that it is to get a YouTube Red subscription...
Still doesn't explain, though, why they keep making such bad investments...
Google Play Music is awesome
YouTube offline videos
YouTube no ads
Still, hard to beat the value and the mood-based radio stations are awesome.
They will never sell youtube RED to that market. RED is only for the san francisco bubble, where everyone already pay $100 overall for streaming services (hulu, netflix, pandora, spotify, etc, etc).
But for those other markets, they actually still rely on eyeballs and ads. And on those markets, they have to open a few concessions to actually get the eyeballs.
This is just another example of Google doing just enough in order to measure what may happen (throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks).
This was a good while ago, so I don't know, if it's still the case. All I know is that I switched to OsmAnd~, set that up once and since then always reliably had a map in my pocket.
YT would get more views actually if they allowed offline now. It would also help with the puny data allowances wireless carriers are imposing these days. The offline will take the power away (in a small way), from the carriers.
They can provide the same experience as today, ads and all. People can watch YT on flights, while driving and what not. Amazon video allows offline usage today and been for a while.
I believe this is really bad example, as WWE is a "premium content" so you have to pay extra to watch it. Therefore Youtube removes those videos (there is only 2 WWE videos which is from legal accounts).
So it's pretty awkward example just as "the young man in Nagpur wants to watch Game of Thrones with his HBO Go membership but he can't because of he is poor internet connection."
Maybe they are premium content in US but free here.
They seem to like to make new stuff, rather then upgrade their existing stuff. Then every second year they just go through their stack and deprecate 30% of it.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
Don't forget the cleanest, best-performing one: the classic "Basic HTML" interface. Which manages to be much faster for most operations than Inbox or the AJAXified normal version despited having to reload the whole page.
At least 6 apps.
Youtube, Youtube Creator Studio, Youtube Kids, Youtube Music, Youtube Gaming, Youtube Go
Similarly, a kids app is very useful given how many kids are growing up using cheap tablets to stream videos, and I know from watching my nephews that the way they use YouTube is very different from how I use it.
Its a ground-up rewrite of the app with a very different experience focus and for a different audience. It wouldn't make much sense as a feature of the existing app.
>It wouldn't make much sense as a feature of the existing app.
Why?
But I’m also a little disappointed it’s a separate app, and country specific from what I can determine. It would be great to see this rolled into the current app without restriction.
This "YouTube Go" MIGHT be a media player. It MIGHT operate on files. It MIGHT be possible to share a video via some mechanism other than bluetooth.
The other day I was trying to convince to a user that she should want to own her content, rather than rent it... when I suddenly realized that he doesn't know what a file is. Moreover, he doesn't realize what it is good for...
Once you have a (DRM free) file, it's yours. You physically possess it. That means you can copy it, share it, back it up, print it, pipe the raw ones and zeros to your PC speaker, whatever. The next generation might not get that...
The fact of the matter is that until I was college-aged, nobody taught me more about computers than Microsoft did. I read every .txt file and .hlp file that existed on my C:\ drive. Not to mention the physical manuals... Then I went on to Linux, etc.
So I KNOW what a file is. You and I can have a conversation about mtimes. We can rattle off a list of traits that each file must possess to BE a file.
What the heck is Google teaching this next generation?
AFAIK no real equivalent to this exists in the video streaming world yet. Plex is starting to come close though: https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/26/plex-cloud-online-server...
It's hard to find a can opener that will last a long time. Food is made as cheaply as possible. Movies are carefully crafted to maximize profit, not to tell stories. Advertisements lie.
If you deconstruct it all down as far as you can go, you land on money. Well, I do. She says its "human nature". Whatever that is.
Or on fast connections but with data caps. So outside of wifi, Youtube is unusable. I'll watch two-three videos and I'll hit my monthly cap.
Almost every single issue India users experience is a problem everywhere else. Every solution they came up with would be useful for users everywhere else. It feels like Google engineers live in the SV bubble where unlimited always-on connectivity is a fact of life. So thanks Google.
&player=html5
Let it play, minimize the video, switch tab or app or whatever, pull up the bottom controls and click play.
Like how long does a single person care about a video? Vlogs are pretty "read once"
Why not just make this the norm? Websites do not need to be 6 MB per page (and that's with an adblocker). Google is one of the worst offenders when it comes to website bloat, including their once-famously incredibly simple search page which is now jam packed with tons of features, both requested and the majority not requested by anyone.
The notion that an HTML 5 web page requires so much extra fluff to accomplish something as simple as streaming video with recommended links and a comments section is maddening.
Just because some of us have bigger, faster phones with more bandwidth doesn't mean you need to make things more complicated.
I'm excited to use this new app but the older one should be deletable.
Google is mostly going in the opposite direction and allowing you to uninstall any apps you don't use [1] -- admittedly, the Youtube app is not one of them on my 6P. But, I can disable it so it's not visible in the app drawer. In fact I can disable all the google apps and have always been able to do so (the only exceptions are non-Google, "system" apps).
Doesn't help if you buy a Samsung phone though....
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=nexus+uninstall+google+apps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...
This article is about rethinking and developing a new youtube app with "offline first" in mind. It was created after researching how YouTube is consumed in India to offer a more user friendly experience.
Has 0 to do with snapchat
My comparison was criticizing (as a YouTube Creator myself) the focus YouTube had in recent years regarding innovation of the platform itself.
YouTube heavily focused on things like: 360° videos, Offline (mentioned in the article), interface, comments, trends.
There is 0 innovation from a creator perspective. Platforms like Snapchat make it insanely (!!!) easy to create content on a regular basis. Sure the Snapchat platform is not at all as full-fledged as YouTube but I think it is dangerously close for quite some (YouTube)genres like Vlogging and could easily be extended.
EDIT to elaborate on Snapchat (for user @lucb1e): Snapchat is per se not interesting for a content-creator with a big following just to send self-destructing messages.
They introduced a feature called „Stories“ a while ago which let's you take multiple clips during the day and then combines them to a „story“. Within 24 hours the viewer/subscriber can play your story and see your whole day.
So you basically have a full video without ever touching Adobe-Premiere or Final-Cut. Importing, editing, exporting, uploading even for the most basic videos on YouTube takes (a lot of) time.
From an analytics perspective you can check views, screenshots, etc of each individual story-element and interact with the viewers (e.g. screenshot to vote for an option).
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/27/13071128/sundar-pichai-goo...
"Reimagined" probably means "more ad slots".
Being able to download at different quality, being able to preview, and being able to share over Bluetooth are just straight up usability improvements for people in the targeted region (and probably elsewhere too).
What makes you think he'd display ads if he had an app like that after he made clear what he thinks of that concept?