Microsoft Re-Releases Its YouTube App For Windows Phone

Microsoft today re-released its YouTube app for Windows Phone, two months after Google axed the prior version over a terms spat. The application is little more than a bridge to YouTube’s website itself.

In May, Google and Microsoft decided to work together to get a strong YouTube app into the Windows Phone marketplace. Microsoft had built something that broke Google’s terms of service (the app was pretty rocking, though), and so the firms decided to work something out in harmony. Instead of a symphony, though, the relationship ended with a raspberry.

Microsoft released a new YouTube app for Windows Phone in August. One day later, it stopped working. The same day, Google confirmed that it had yanked the app’s access to YouTube. The issue? Microsoft had built the application in native code, and Google wanted it to be built using HTML5. Microsoft admitted to Google that Windows Phone simply wasn’t capable enough at the moment, but indicated that, in the future, it would be open to making the shift. Google wasn’t having it.

Also, there were spats between the two companies about API access and the like. The kicker is that Google itself built its YouTube application with native code, which is what Microsoft wanted to do on its own platform. However, Google requires all third parties to build their YouTube applications with HTML5, and since Microsoft was technically just another third-party — ha, no dice.

Today’s release of the same app that was in the market ages ago is at once the nadir and denouement of a silly situation. Congress might be a gaseous chamber prone to uncomfortable rumbles, but the ongoing turf war between Google and Microsoft might actually be more petty. That’s an accomplishment.

Top Image Credit: Vernon Chan