
YouTube Go: YouTube reimagined for the next generation of YouTube viewers - scommab
http://youtube.googleblog.com/2016/09/youtube-go-youtube-reimagined-for-next.html
======
izacus
So now there's YouTube app (which doens't allow me to listen to a talk offline
on an airplane or background or pay for YouTube Red), YouTube Music app (which
I'm not allowed to use at all), YouTube Gaming (which has an UI and UX build
by a madman). Then there's AndroidTV version of YouTube app which has severe
feature limitations and probably some others as well. I don't really like to
be negative, but it doesn't seem that Google has any idea what to do with
YouTube or any interest of expanding it to EU and the rest of the world. Not
to mention the rampant catastrophe that's ContentID police system that's
benefiting only large corporate abusers with no recourse.

So I wonder, will I perhaps be able to watch talks and other videos on an
airplane now using YouTube Go? Which subset of functionality will work on this
soon-to-be-abandoned app? Does it even address any of the issues that content
creators, Google and us users have with the platform?

~~~
gue5t
Try youtube-dl (before the international copyright police C&D it). I'm sure
there's an app wrapper that can handle intents (NewPipe?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12591466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12591466)),
and then you can open the videos in the VLC app.

The owners of YouTube do not have it in their best interest to provide you
with flexible, no-nonsense tools.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Wow, cheers for that.

I was looking for a youtube video downloader a week or two back, but was
really struggling to find one that wasn't spamware.

~~~
yellowapple
There's also a Greasemonkey userscript called "YouTube Center"
([https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki](https://github.com/YePpHa/YouTubeCenter/wiki))
that I've found to work pretty well for an in-browser tool.

~~~
rasz_pl
it hasnt been updated in a while and is mostly broken now :(

"Download YouTube Videos as MP4" on the other hand has active dev,
[https://github.com/gantt/downloadyoutube](https://github.com/gantt/downloadyoutube)

------
JoshTriplett
Hopefully this will actually work in _all_ countries; I'd love to save videos
for offline viewing while I have a wifi connection and watch them later when I
don't. But that would compete with "YouTube Red".

For that matter, since an offline video eliminates the buffering problem, I'd
love to have the "playback speed" feature in the mobile app. The web version
of YouTube supports changing the playback speed to 1.25x, 1.5x, or 2x, but the
mobile version doesn't.

~~~
ultramancool
Try NewPipe, it's an open source YouTube downloader and background player for
Android:

[https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.schabi.newpi...](https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=org.schabi.newpipe)

~~~
JoshTriplett
Looks promising. Doesn't seem to support subscriptions, though, which is the
problem every unofficial YouTube app seems to have. Probably because logging
in and accessing subscriptions requires the API, which has a ToS.

~~~
ultramancool
Yeah, the XBMC Youtube addon used to do subscriptions and the like, it was
pretty nice, but I think it broke and the main developer abandoned it.
Youtube-dl does support channels and resuming though so you could fairly
easily just set up a cron job and use syncthing to get the videos onto your
phone. No pretty GUI for that though.

------
qwertyuiop924
Google still doesn't know what it's doing with YouTube. As a longtime consumer
of YouTube videos, and somebody who is actually inside of the YouTube
community, I understand that. The "Advertiser Friendly" policy was universally
mocked for being absurd, and it is. Then there's the indication that it was
behind the inexplicable monetization drops on major channels a few months
back. The YouTube team has been seen to do some good stuff as well, like the
Community tab, but if they want to keep the communities they've built, and the
near monopoly on online video they have, they need to get out of their ivory
tower, and actually understand that when they make decisions they have real
effects on the monetary income of real people, and that when they change their
algorithm or site design, people actually go out of business.

However, at least in this case, they're taking a step in the right direction,
no matter how small.

~~~
terda12
Honestly they could have just left youtube alone, let it generate ad revenue
in return for hosting videos, and that's it. No need for youtube red, youtube
go, "advertiser friendly" crap. Just keep running youtube and use that revenue
to fund other projects.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
Apparently, Google disagrees. YouTube hosts a massive amount of video, so they
may be right.

I actually don't think YouTube Red was necessarily a bad idea: People get to
skip ads, and play videos offline/with their phone locked. We use that money
to pay creators and fund premium content.

To counter, if you want to support the creators, it's better to subscribe via
Vessel or Patreon that it is to get a YouTube Red subscription...

------
ghostly_s
As much as this sounds like something I would personally be very interested
in, I can't help but think it doesn't fit into Google's ideal of how customers
use their products. Rather I get the impression they're pursuing this
begrudgingly just as a way to get into the Indian market; the announcement is
notably non-committal about it ever being rolled out in the US.

~~~
baldfat
I would say that I pay for YouTube Red because of in this order:

Google Play Music is awesome

YouTube offline videos

YouTube no ads

~~~
m_mueller
I'd buy this in a heartbeat if I could. No big hopes that it will come soon
where I live though - google is just not hungry like Netflix and co it seems.

------
skynetv2
This should be made available every where. But then they can't charge us for
offline and background play.

YT would get more views actually if they allowed offline now. It would also
help with the puny data allowances wireless carriers are imposing these days.
The offline will take the power away (in a small way), from the carriers.

They can provide the same experience as today, ads and all. People can watch
YT on flights, while driving and what not. Amazon video allows offline usage
today and been for a while.

~~~
the_common_man
Yeah, they can even make the ads from the flight systems instead and charge
airline providers :-).

------
bonjurkes
"While in Nagpur, I met a young man who loved using YouTube to watch WWE
wrestling and wanted to show us his favorite video. But after he found it and
tapped to play, the video just wouldn’t load"

I believe this is really bad example, as WWE is a "premium content" so you
have to pay extra to watch it. Therefore Youtube removes those videos (there
is only 2 WWE videos which is from legal accounts).

So it's pretty awkward example just as "the young man in Nagpur wants to watch
Game of Thrones with his HBO Go membership but he can't because of he is poor
internet connection."

~~~
ToastyMallows
This also struck me. I was surprised that they picked WWE of all things, you
would think that video would be region locked and thus not available outside
of the US, like a lot of things are.

~~~
dingo_bat
I'm in India. I searched "wwe". Tons of videos. No evidence of region blocking
or as another person said "premium content". Have a look:
[http://imgur.com/8xgmnDq](http://imgur.com/8xgmnDq)

Maybe they are premium content in US but free here.

~~~
ToastyMallows
Thanks for the fact check! I'm glad that they're not region locked, but I know
that a TON of stuff is.

------
gtirloni
I don't understand why a new app if this could just be an additional feature
in the current app. Doesn't this lead to fragmentation and confusion?

~~~
dubcanada
Yes, but Google is exceptionally good at fragmentation and confusion in
regards to products. How many gmail apps do they have? Inbox, gmail, android
mail (though this got deprecated), web interface, etc. Youtube now has 2 apps,
a web interface.

They seem to like to make new stuff, rather then upgrade their existing stuff.
Then every second year they just go through their stack and deprecate 30% of
it.

~~~
ashark
> Inbox, gmail, android mail (though this got deprecated)

Don't forget the cleanest, best-performing one: the classic "Basic HTML"
interface. Which manages to be much faster for most operations than Inbox or
the AJAXified normal version despited having to reload the whole page.

~~~
movedx
You just have to love that classic approach to web development, right?

JavaScript is great for improving the user experience, but it's often vastly
overused and just makes me scream for simpler times such as the classic web
app.

~~~
ashark
I'm increasingly convinced that much better solutions to most of the problems
Javascript and AJAX solve ("solve") would have been _better frames_ and
improved HTML forms.

~~~
movedx
Exactly! I use Bootstrap for the auto-scaling to the device, and AlpacaJS for
the dynamically generated and adjustable forms... but that's it. That's all I
want from JS: form management and validation, and responsive design (and I
believe the latter is done in pure CSS anyway?)

------
daveloyall
Grr... Is google seeking praise for slightly loosening the shackles?

This "YouTube Go" MIGHT be a media player. It MIGHT operate on files. It MIGHT
be possible to share a video via some mechanism other than bluetooth.

The other day I was trying to convince to a user that she should want to own
her content, rather than rent it... when I suddenly realized that he doesn't
know what a file is. Moreover, he doesn't realize what it is good for...

Once you have a (DRM free) file, it's yours. You physically possess it. That
means you can copy it, share it, back it up, print it, pipe the raw ones and
zeros to your PC speaker, whatever. The next generation might not get that...

The fact of the matter is that until I was college-aged, nobody taught me more
about computers than Microsoft did. I read every .txt file and .hlp file that
existed on my C:\ drive. Not to mention the physical manuals... Then I went on
to Linux, etc.

So I KNOW what a file is. You and I can have a conversation about mtimes. We
can rattle off a list of traits that each file must possess to BE a file.

What the heck is Google teaching this next generation?

~~~
exolymph
Owning is just so much less convenient than renting access. I vastly prefer
the experience of using Spotify and Netflix to the experience of maintaining
my own music and media collections.

~~~
ki85squared
While I agree, renting access often comes with the trade-off of losing control
of your content. Netflix's content licensing agreements are finite, and your
favorite movie or show could be gone next week. When you own the files, you
own them for however long you desire.

~~~
exolymph
True, there are always tradeoffs. This particular tradeoff doesn't bother me
because I can always get a copy of a particular file if I need to, e.g. if
Netflix pulls down a show I like.

------
macspoofing
>But even as they discover the joys of YouTube, their experience is not great
on slower connections and less powerful mobile phone ..

Or on fast connections but with data caps. So outside of wifi, Youtube is
unusable. I'll watch two-three videos and I'll hit my monthly cap.

Almost every single issue India users experience is a problem everywhere else.
Every solution they came up with would be useful for users everywhere else. It
feels like Google engineers live in the SV bubble where unlimited always-on
connectivity is a fact of life. So thanks Google.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
If you're careful, you can get a good number of videos on a data plan,
depending on what your cap is. At least, I can, but my cap is pretty big.

~~~
movedx
Can you expand more on what it is to be "careful"? What can I do to reduce the
data usage when attempting to view a long video?

~~~
grapeshot
There is a setting in the YouTube app to only play in SD when not on WiFi but
that may only be on Android. It's still not nearly as fine grained as it
should be.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
On iPhone, YouTube will only play on lowest possible quality on cellular.

------
jonthepirate
I would love the ability to leave a video playing on my phone when I turn the
screen off. I often will listen to a song but as soon as the app minimizes or
the phone goes to sleep mode, it stops.

~~~
joncalhoun
You can do this on Android. At least I can, as a Google music subscriber (so I
have YouTube Red). I just tested it with a random video.

~~~
Cyph0n
Why isn't this a free feature though?

~~~
r00fus
Good question, one that probably has less to do with what Google wants, and
what the music industry requires. If you turn off the screen, the "video" is
indistinguishable from an audio stream. So they want to track for terms of
royalties paid per "listen".

This is only feasible on a subscription basis (no one has a good
microtransaction model with actual payments) and so Google and the music
industry limited the feature to only subscription based.

~~~
Cyph0n
But since Google owns the Android platform, they could make YouTube track
usage even when it's off-screen (paused Android activity), right? Heck, that
may even be feasible without special privileges. Not sure about iOS though.

I mean, if I can minimize a tab running YouTube on my PC, I don't see why I
can't do that on my phone.

------
jkot
I think this is great idea. Many users are watching youtube offline.

~~~
thampiman
Do you have any stats on youtube usage? Personally I don't use the offline
feature very much.

~~~
CaptSpify
I'm wondering if that's because of where you live? In the US at least, if your
not in a top 10 city, chances are your data connection is terrible.

~~~
thirdsun
Of course it depends on where you live. Even in europe you'll find lots of
underserved areas once you'll leave the cities. No provider is interested in
building the network in these regions.

------
amelius
The next generation will want to download the video and store it, just in case
it gets pulled because of content owner rights.

~~~
dublinben
The current generation already does.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I still have lots of pre-Youtube (and even ripped Youtube) videos hanging
around my backups, and I still want to keep them.

------
bitwize
Holy shit you guys, some people _actually_ use our apps from devices lacking
an always-on connection! This is the revolution that will give rise to Web 4.0
-- apps that can work without the internet! It'll be the biggest thing since
the recent development of Web pages that automatically reconfigure to fit
different screen sizes!

------
FussyZeus
> But even as they discover the joys of YouTube, their experience is not great
> on slower connections and less powerful mobile phones.

Why not just make this the norm? Websites do not need to be 6 MB per page (and
that's with an adblocker). Google is one of the worst offenders when it comes
to website bloat, including their once-famously incredibly simple search page
which is now jam packed with tons of features, both requested and the majority
not requested by anyone.

The notion that an HTML 5 web page requires so much extra fluff to accomplish
something as simple as streaming video with recommended links and a comments
section is maddening.

Just because some of us have bigger, faster phones with more bandwidth doesn't
mean you need to make things more complicated.

------
dingo_bat
So can I finally delete the fortune app from my phone? I think this forced
installation of tens of useless Google apps on android is horrible. I don't
use their crappy services and I should be able to delete their apps from my
phone. And I don't want to root because that invalidates knox in my phone,
which I need for office stuff.

I'm excited to use this new app but the older one should be deletable.

~~~
gman99
The "Fortune" app? As you mention knox, I assume this is an app that Samsung
force installs on your phone; so I don't really see what Google can do
(without locking Android down even more, and I'd rather they didn't).

Google is mostly going in the opposite direction and allowing you to uninstall
any apps you don't use [1] -- admittedly, the Youtube app is not one of them
on my 6P. But, I can disable it so it's not visible in the app drawer. In fact
I can disable all the google apps and have always been able to do so (the only
exceptions are non-Google, "system" apps).

Doesn't help if you buy a Samsung phone though....

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=nexus+uninstall+google+apps](https://www.google.com/search?q=nexus+uninstall+google+apps)

~~~
dingo_bat
Fortune was supposed to be YouTube. And I know I can "disable" it. I don't
want to disable it, I want to delete it.

------
self_awareness
On Android there is also Youtube Downloader that works quite nicely:
[https://dentex.github.io/apps/youtubedownloader/](https://dentex.github.io/apps/youtubedownloader/)

------
hubert123
well it would be cool if i could tag a bunch of videos to be viewed offline in
the app. I have a music list on youtube and sometimes i have for example a
political debate that is an hour long, it would be cool if i could just tap on
it in youtube to make it offline viewable instead of going through the massive
hassle of downloading it somehow, transferring it to the phone etc and then
maybe i dont want to watch it anyway..

~~~
Ajedi32
You can do this if you have YouTube Red, or if you're subscribed to Google
Music.

------
stuaxo
Right, now do the same for Gmail - the offline search is terrible when you are
not connected.

------
skeltoac
I want to know who or what will decide what to put in the preview. Will
content creators have any control over this? If previews are strictly
algorithmic, will there be recourse in case a certain preview misrepresents or
spoils the content?

------
sridca
From [http://www.youtubego.com/signup/](http://www.youtubego.com/signup/)

> Mazze udao, data nahin

What language is this?

~~~
1024core
It is in Hindi. A literal translation would be something like "blow your fun,
not your data", where the first "blow" means "expand", and the second "blow"
is the traditional "explode" or "destroy".

~~~
sridca
Thanks. I'm from India and I speak Tamil. It is eldritch when people use Hindi
as representative of the whole country. Hindi, along with English, may be an
official language - but _more than half_ the population do not speak it!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers_in_India#More_than_one_million_speakers)

------
Omnipresent
Features to combat low connectivity and the cricket gif in the images show
that this change is made with Indian market in mind.

------
5partan
Ad "even wrestling": there was wrestling in India centuries before even Eric
the Red discovered America.

------
ty_
In China, download video for offline viewing is a standard feature of all
domestic video app, even on PC.

------
ausjke
since long time ago I could download youtube for offline watching already so
what's new here, I tried two minutes to read this article and gave up, I wish
it pinpoints what youtube-go really is and give me the answer in 144 words.

------
smpetrey
But there's no SD Card interface on iOS?

------
SixSigma
India : Bollywood & Cricket, yeah!

------
philfrasty
„YouTube reimagined for the next generation of YouTube viewers“ = Snapchat

~~~
mxwll
What?

This article is about rethinking and developing a new youtube app with
"offline first" in mind. It was created after researching how YouTube is
consumed in India to offer a more user friendly experience.

Has 0 to do with snapchat

~~~
philfrasty
I read the whole article.

My comparison was criticizing (as a YouTube Creator myself) the focus YouTube
had in recent years regarding innovation of the platform itself.

YouTube heavily focused on things like: 360° videos, Offline (mentioned in the
article), interface, comments, trends.

There is 0 innovation from a creator perspective. Platforms like Snapchat make
it insanely (!!!) easy to create content on a regular basis. Sure the Snapchat
platform is not at all as full-fledged as YouTube but I think it is
dangerously close for quite some (YouTube)genres like Vlogging and could
easily be extended.

EDIT to elaborate on Snapchat (for user @lucb1e): Snapchat is per se not
interesting for a content-creator with a big following just to send self-
destructing messages.

They introduced a feature called „Stories“ a while ago which let's you take
multiple clips during the day and then combines them to a „story“. Within 24
hours the viewer/subscriber can play your story and see your whole day.

So you basically have a full video without ever touching Adobe-Premiere or
Final-Cut. Importing, editing, exporting, uploading even for the most basic
videos on YouTube takes (a lot of) time.

From an analytics perspective you can check views, screenshots, etc of each
individual story-element and interact with the viewers (e.g. screenshot to
vote for an option).

------
andrewvijay
Google's sudden push for India is kinda spooky.

~~~
dredmorbius
Oddly enough, the billion-plus, relatively-well-educated, developing nation
your CEO happens to have been born in might find itself a slightly corporate
emphasis.

~~~
andrewvijay
He's not my CEO though. I would be glad if it was that way. Being a googler.

------
Animats
From a user perspective, the purpose of YouTube is to play out videos. Time
spent in YouTube's user interface is a means for getting to the videos. But
from Google's perspective, the revenue comes from time in the user interface,
where the ads are.

"Reimagined" probably means "more ad slots".

~~~
chickenfries
Are you serious? The valuable ads are IN the videos. Did you even read about
any of the features here?

~~~
Animats
The parent article never mentions ads. Is there a version of this article for
advertisers?

~~~
chickenfries
No, that is just my knowledge from using YouTube and my experience with ad
trafficking. YouTube's ad revenue comes from the videos you see when you watch
YouTube videos, not from the ads around the website or in the UI of the mobile
app. Do the current mobile apps even have ads in the UI? I don't think they
do.

The point I'm trying to make is that YouTube Go offers a significantly
different UX that seems to be about making YouTube more accessible on slower
connections. Your speculation about ads in the UI is baseless, IMO.

~~~
carsongross
_> Did you even read about any of the features here?_

 _> No, that is just my knowledge from using YouTube and my experience with ad
trafficking._

Never change, HackerNews comments.

~~~
chickenfries
> Did you even read about any of the features here?

This was referring to the fact that the main features that the article
discussed were about previewing videos and peer to peer video sharing, which
are tangible UX improvements that have nothing to do with showing the user
more ads.

Can I clear anything else up for you?

~~~
carsongross
Nope. That's about it.

------
strgrd
Great to see Google splintering off into single duty compartments instead of
spreading itself so thin that nothing gets done with the same amount of focus.
Alphabet was a true design decision, and a mature one at that. One thing that
crossed my mind recently was the notion of Google and its long relationship
with hardware: we have this thing called the Blockchain now, and it could do
with some of Google's hardware to run on, instead of independent factions of
people spending their pocket money on their own hardware. It kind of makes me
jealous and annoyed that so much could be spent for what effectively is
sometimes just a data center for storing people's holiday snaps on Google
Plus, when it could be used to host micro democracies and change the direction
of finance. I suspect all that hardware will eventually be re-purposed many
times throughout the course of the Google experiment and probably will
eventually be given away at some point to the blockchainers who need it. I can
picture the scene: dreadlocked decentralists rejoicing at their new hardware
gift from Google, 25+ years from now. The ultimate redemption from their years
of slavishly handing their personal information over to Google in exchange for
a decent search experience. A true revenge for consumers of Google. Meanwhile
Google would have entirely switched to SSDs and are probably using post-
quantum chips, but at least we can host multiple different blockchains now
without spending our pocket money on them. The blockchainers can start to get
rich and blockchain can really flourish. Also, Google needs to create services
which are for a post Snowden world. Allo is cute, but entirely inferior to
things like Signal which addresses the problem of encrypted private chat head
on. Google needs to create things like its own VPN service, perhaps?

