YouTube Go is what we’ve all be waiting for. The ability to download and view full content YouTube videos offline without any need to use up data. Announced today it allows not only offline viewing, but also sharing videos that you have downloaded with people using Bluetooth.
As it is a 1st party app, it is a lot more polished than anything else, as you would expect. With this, you can preview the video before you download it and you can control the quality (360p, 480p etc) with a display of the file size. This is particularly useful for people who are either on a metered connection, running off of cellular and are watching their cap or simply in an area with very slow internet connectivity.
The disappointing news is that it is only launching in India to start with, which does make sense logically, as disappointing as that is to us. The reason for this is that India is actually, the perfect place to test it, when you think about it. They aren’t as well connected when compared to places such as the UK with all the free WiFi we have and they certainly don’t have the fibre-optic speeds that we have all grown accustomed to and, combined with the expensive mobile data packages, can’t stream like we can.
Vice President, Johanna Wright on behalf of YouTube Product management said the following in a public statement:
YouTube Go is a brand new app to help the next generation of users share and enjoy videos. YouTube Go was designed and built from the ground up with insights from India, in order to bring the power of video to mobile users in a way that is more conscious of their data and connectivity, while still being locally relevant and social.
If you are currently in India, you can get involved and sign up right away to YouTube Go. Unfortunately, there was no mention about any future availability within different countries such as the UK, USA or anywhere else. There has also bene no launch date for India provided, as of yet.
This is of course, yet another app that YouTube is adding to their arsenal. Whether this is because there were too many complications integrating it into their current app or re-building from the ground up with an app was easier we will likely never know.
Is this a good idea or would you prefer to see it in your country? Is it another app too far? Leave a comment below and don’t forget to get in touch on social media.
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