Roger Fingas
Despite it being available for nearly three years, Apple has removed a popular alternative YouTube client — ProTube — from the App Store, allegedly bowing to pressure by Google.
Google, which owns YouTube, first asked Apple to pull ProTube over a year ago on the basis that it violates the company's terms of service, developer Jonas Gessner said in a blog post. Similar takedown requests were reportedly directed against other YouTube clients.
Eventually Google insisted that Gessner stop making ProTube a paid title and disable all of its signature features, such as background playback and an audio-only mode. This would've rendered the app useless versus the official YouTube client, but since ProTube's arrival Google has launched YouTube Red, a service which includes some of ProTube's features — but for a monthly fee.
Gessner said he tried to negotiate with Google but found communication "very difficult," without the chance to get a direct response to questions. The company is said to have threatened legal action, and hanging over the process was the chance that Google would simply switch off ProTube's access to the YouTube API.
Ultimately Gessner found that letting the app get pulled was the best decision, since it would end the fight with Google while letting existing users hold onto the features they paid for.
ProTube 1 is still available on Cydia, a distribution system for jailbroken iPhones and iPads, but Gessner said that he decided against putting ProTube 2.x on the platform since relatively few people have jailbroken hardware, App Store purchases can't be carried over to Cydia, and Google might still pursue legal action.
Developers have sometimes complained that App Store rules can be fickle, making it hard to count on the store as a source of income. Last month, a group of 28 Chinese developers filed a related antitrust complaint.
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20 Comments
It's Google's wont. And it's their clientele they're ticking off. Their call.
Nothing much that Apple can do about it at the end of the day, despite trying.
This would be akin to a developer having an app that accessed the iTunes Store, but lets you stream any of the songs you want. I’m sure Apple wouldn’t be happy since that would make Apple Music redundant, even though the other app is still using Apple’s infrastructure. Don’t really see how Google can be blamed here.
TS, I do like some of the things you write, but you do better when you you actually look before claiming things as fact. It's easy to find anti-Google YouTube content, 180 degrees counter to what you imply.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+evil+youtube&rlz=1CAZZAB_enUS739US739&oq=Google+evil+youtube&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64.5700j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
No surprise. This was the fate expected of ProTube when I purchased it. I wouldn't mind this action if Google's YouTube app supported 4k video and background play on the 12.9" iPad, but it doesn't, so I do.
Tangentially, one thing my brief stint with YouTube TV emphasized was how poorly designed Google's apps are. Google/Alphabet just isn't as good at software as its reputation suggests. And their attracting a lot of high profile employees is just fluff, just like a lot of the X projects are. All the better to recruit young, impressionable graduates. (Now, I do have great respect for the company's ability to track people, store the data forever, and the potential to mine the data in the future as their software improves.)