Google and Microsoft are at it again. Things are heating up between the two tech giant’s as they are arguing about Microsoft’s recently released YouTube app for Windows Phone. Within few hours of the initial release, Google blocked the app claiming that it violates terms of their service. So, Microsoft has bowed to Google, fixed these issues and relaunched the app, just to get the app blocked again by Google, for the second time.
It seems like there’s more to this story than it seems. As Microsoft’s David Howard explained in a blog post Google has asked Microsoft to write the app in HTML5 instead of following old technology, which Microsoft said to be a hard and time consuming task at the time. Since Google stayed firm on its’ terms, Microsoft have relaunched the app while agreeing to “work with Google long-term on an app based on HTML5″. Even though, Google has blocked the app again.
“It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting.” Howard said in the statement.
While this may seem like an innocent request, let’s not forget that Microsoft has been in war with Google for years before this small incident. As The Guardian points out “there are more menacing hints elsewhere in the post”. Anyhow, it seems like this battle is going way further than the Windows Phone app, because according to a Redditor, Google is now using ’nomobile=1′ flags to prevent Windows Phone users from viewing videos. Seems like it’s happening to all the Windows Phone folks.
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Roshan Jerad Perera