Google again disables YouTube app for Windows Phone, but Microsoft says it’s just ‘excuses’ [Update]

Update: Microsoft released a statement saying that the repeated disabling of the YouTube app to be “frustrating” for customers. David Howard, the company’s Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, said that when Google says that Microsoft wasn’t abiding by the “terms and conditions”, it was in reference to the fact the app wasn’t based on HTML5.

Other concerns include branding on the app. Howard, in a bit of a jab at Google, says “the funny thing about this point is that we’ve been using the same branding continuously since 2010 for an inferior YouTube app.”

Lastly, Howard says that Google feels the YouTube app offers a degraded experience, but Microsoft clearly objects to that with reviews supporting the company’s claims.

In short, Microsoft states that Google doesn’t want Windows Phone users to have “the same experience as Android and Apple users, and that their objections are nothing other than excuses.”

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Oops. Earlier this week, Microsoft released an updated version of its YouTube app for Windows Phone after working with Google to resolve terms of service violations, but the changes weren’t enough. Google has again blocked the app, as noted by the The Verge.

A YouTube spokesperson provided the following statement to The Next Web:

We’re committed to providing users and creators with a great and consistent YouTube experience across devices, and 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. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines.

Meanwhile, Microsoft responded with this:

Google is blocking our updated YouTube app for Windows Phone.  We are working with them to resolve the issue.

The whole situation is a bit confusing, as Microsoft suggested earlier this week when it re-released the app that it had addressed Google’s concerns. The disagreement appears to be centered around the proper addition of ads to the app. Google and Microsoft had both publicly stated in May that they were cooperating on the app, but that collaboration has since broken down. As Google noted in its statement, part of the disagreement comes from a difference of opinion over whether to base the app on HTML5.

Image Credit: ERIC PIERMONT/AFP/GettyImages