YouTube Go is shutting down starting this August, Google has introduced this week. The light-weight Android app first launched in 2016 and options offline viewing and close by sharing. Like different apps designed for rising markets, YouTube Go features a suite of options that soak up consideration the excessive prices of knowledge, poor sign energy, and the prevalent use of SD playing cards on Android units. YouTube Go first launched in India and later grew to become obtainable in over 130 international locations worldwide.
The corporate notes that since 2016, it has invested in enhancements to the primary YouTube app that make it carry out higher in rising markets, whereas additionally delivering a greater consumer expertise. For instance, the corporate has improved efficiency for entry-level units or people who watch YouTube on slower networks. YouTube additionally plans to construct out extra consumer controls that assist to lower utilization for viewers with restricted knowledge.
YouTube recommends that YouTube Go customers set up the primary YouTube app or go to the browser model of the platform. The corporate notes that the primary YouTube app supplies a greater general consumer expertise compared to YouTube Go, and that it has user-requested options that aren’t obtainable on YouTube Go, comparable to the flexibility to remark, submit, create content material and use darkish theme.
“Utilizing the primary YouTube app, YouTube Go customers will have the ability to take part in creation and group and have entry to an general improved consumer expertise,” the corporate stated in a weblog submit.
One of many most important options of YouTube Go is the flexibility to obtain and save movies for offline viewing later, which was meant to make it simpler for customers who might not have web entry always to nonetheless have the ability to entry movies on the platform. Though YouTube’s most important app does assist offline movies, the function is locked behind the corporate’s Premium subscription. It seems to be like YouTube’s choice to close down Go could also be a method for it to push customers in direction of its Premium providing, which is presently priced at $12 per thirty days in the US and 129 rupees a month in India.
YouTube Go isn’t the one light-weight app to close down lately, as Fb shut down Fb Lite in 2020. Fb Lite launched in 2015 to succeed in customers in rising markets however was later shut down resulting from poor adoption and customers had been instructed to make use of the primary Fb app as a substitute. As well as, Google, which is YouTube’s guardian firm, additionally lately shut down the Chrome Lite mode function that was designed to assist customers save web.
With low-end smartphones getting higher each by way of {hardware} and software program over time, it is smart for digital giants like Google and Fb to close down their light-weight apps as they’re not as essential as they had been just a few years in the past.
