The truth is that it was never an ideal situation for the company, since it couldn’t monetize videos viewed on the app, and it had little control over the user experience. Furthermore, with the proliferation of video apps on Apple’s App Store, Apple users aren’t nearly as reliant on the YouTube app for video content as they were just a few years ago.Īpple might have decided not to re-license and pre-load the app, but YouTube actually stands to benefit from its removal. We all know how upset Steve Jobs was about the launch of Google’s Android mobile OS, Schmidt’s departure from the Apple board, and Apple’s recent moves to get distance itself from other Google applications - like Maps - in iOS 6. YouTube, based on its popularity, seemed like a natural choice. Then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt was on Apple’s board, and Apple, hoping to hit it big with the device, wanted to have a video application to set it apart from existing smartphones.

Of course, when it first came out, the world was a different place. Rajaraman was reluctant to say anything on the record about the app being removed or YouTube’s iOS strategy going forward, but based on our conversation, here’s why Google is unlikely to be too upset about the change.įirst, though, here’s a bit of backstory: YouTube was one of the first apps to be available on the iPhone when it was released, and has come pre-loaded on all iOS devices over the last five years. The short version is that the app, which has long been a fixture of iOS home screens since 2007, will soon go away.Īnyway, while I wasn’t able to help my coworkers out immediately, I was lucky to be at YouTube at the time, and I ended my day by meeting with Shiva Rajaraman, product manager at the company and the guy responsible for its channel, device, and developer strategies. It was then that my coworkers, knowing where I was, started blowing up my phone, email, text, and Yammer, all in the hopes of getting some official response from YouTube.įor those who missed the biggest tech story of the day, you can read Chris Velazco’s account of the news here. I was in the middle of a meeting with Hunter Walk, who was telling me about YouTube for Good - his initiative to help education, non-profits, and citizen journalists to better take advantage of the video-sharing platform.

There I was, sitting at YouTube HQ in San Bruno, when news came down that the pre-loaded YouTube app would be removed from the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS6.

You tube app for iphone