The day before Apple is set to unveil its new iPhone, Google has released a standalone app that will replace the stock YouTube app that has been removed from iOS 6.
Google announced the release on its official blog early Tuesday. The company touted the apps’ channel guide, instant search recommendations and options to share to social networking sites.
The release notes for the app list the following features:
- Enjoy YouTube’s vast video catalog, including official music videos
- Find videos and channels more easily with voice search and query autocomplete
- Subscribe to channels and instantly access your subscriptions with the channel guide UI
- Read comments, browse related videos, enable subtitles and more – all while watching
- Easy video sharing to Google+, E-mail, Facebook and Twitter
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The new app comes with a trade-off. Google says tens of thousands of videos, such as music videos from VEVO, are now available that we’ren’t before, but users will now have to sit through advertising to watch them.
Reports emerged last month that Apple and Google would part ways on the bundled YouTube app with the release of iOS 6, which is expected to arrive alongside the sixth-generation iPhone.
Apple confirmed the move (and Google’s upcoming app) with a statement: “Our license to include the YouTube app in iOS has ended, customers can use YouTube in the Safari browser and Google is working on a new YouTube app to be on the App Store.”
Google responded by noting that it was “working with Apple to ensure we have the best possible YouTube experience for iOS users.”
In August, TNW’s own Matthew Panzarino provided the following reasons for the split:
- Apple doesn’t need it any more.
- This year is all about getting rid of Google.
- Google will be able to push updates faster.
- Google stands to make a ton of money from ads.
(hat tip Engadget)
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