While everyone in the technology playground is crowding around the slugfest that is Apple vs Samsung, there’s another scuffle developing between the other tech giants, Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft pulled the Youtube app from its Window Phone in May when the search engine giant complained that it didn’t include ads.
After working on the app with Google, Microsoft re-released it on August 13 – but now it’s been blocked by Google for ‘violating itsterms of use’.
"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," says a Google spokesperson. "It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines."
Now Microsoft has published a blog post entitled ‘The Limits of Google’s Openness’ – a reference to the search engine firm’s 2009 commitment to ensuring the internet stays within an open system.
The blog post says, basically, that Google’s objections to the app are at odds with its commitment to openness, with Google wanting Microsoft to rewrite the app in HTML5 (not what the iPhone and Android YouTube apps are coded in).
Microsoft Corporate VP David Howard said: "It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it."
This might be one to watch…
