Why Google and Microsoft's YouTube battle is not just about HTML 5

The Google vs Microsoft battle just keeps getting uglier. Last week, Microsoft re-launched a YouTube app for the Windows Phone but it was banned by Google. A previous app by Google had met with the same fate, leading to the relaunch. But with Google, rejecting this app as well, Microsoft decided to go public with its anger and frustration. The company’s Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel David Howard lashed out at the search engine giant in a post titled, ‘The limits of Google’s openness: This week, after we addressed each of Google’s points, we re-launched the app, only to have Google technically block it.  [caption id=“attachment_1043677” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] A Samsung Windows 8 Phone is seen in this file photo. Reuters[/caption] We know that this has been frustrating, to say the least, for our customers. We have always had one goal: to provide our users a YouTube experience on Windows Phone that’s on par with the YouTube experience available to Android and iPhone users. Google’s objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google’s own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn’t impose on its own platform or Apple’s (both of which use Google as the default search engine, of course). Google however issued a public statement and justified the blocking, saying that Microsoft did not make the required changes. “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.” The Verge has done a detailed piece on how the whole Google-Microsoft tussle over YouTube seems to be centred around one issue: HTML 5. The report states that Google is forcing Microsoft to build its YouTube Windows Phone app in HTML5, despite its own Android and iOS versions using superior native code. A full HTML 5 app is currently not possible on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform. It also seems that Google wanted full approval rights on Microsoft’s YouTube app, something that Microsoft didn’t wait for, before publishing the app. You can read the full piece here. The Google-Microsft battle however goes beyond issues with YouTUbe and HTML 5. In the past Microsoft launched a scathing attack on Google with a ‘Scroogled’ ad campaign, accusing Google of not respecting customer privacy. Obviously that can’t have gone down too well with Google. Then of course, Microsoft is trying hard to establish the Windows Phone platform as an alternate eco-system to the Android and iOS universe. For that to be a success, Microsoft needs apps and the lack of a YouTube app isn’t going to help.