Google(s GOOG) has once again disabled Microsoft’s(S MSFT) Windows Phone YouTube app, which was released just a few days ago in an attempt to bring a native YouTube experience to Windows Phone. In a statement, YouTube blamed Microsoft for not building the app based on HTML5, and not fully supporting the necessary HTML5 standards in its mobile browser:
“We’re committed to providing users and creators with a great and consistent YouTube experience across devices, and we’ve been working with Microsoft to build a fully featured YouTube for Windows Phone app, based on HTML5. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service. It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told the folks over at the Verge that the company is working with YouTube to resolve the issue, and Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel David Howard has since responded with a detailed blog post, alleging that Google is making up reasons to block the release of the app:
“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. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it.”
Microsoft had to rebuild its YouTube app after YouTube disabled API access for an earlier version back in May. At the time, one of the key issues was that Microsoft’s app didn’t display any ads. Now, ads are being displayed, but Microsoft didn’t follow YouTube’s lead to build the app in HTML5, which amongst other things apparently makes it more difficult to track these ads.
Updated at 2:40pm with a response from Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel David Howard.
