The best version of YouTube that you don't have.
UPDATE : Youtube Go is Region Locked out of the US & Canada. Meaning you cannot download it in the US & Canada.
UPDATE : You can save videos in the regular YouTube app, but only with a YouTube Red subscription.
For people in the US or Canada, wireless internet is usually has no limit on how much data you can use, but in other places around the world such as India, you're often capped on how much data you can use on your wireless internet connection. Not to mention it's extremely difficult to even get an internet connection in the first place. Which is part of the reason most people rely on data plans in places like India. As over there, data plans are extremely cheap, especially compared to North American prices and India's broadband internet prices.
That's why, this year at Google's annual software conference they announced YouTube Go. A brand new YouTube app designed for use in emerging markets like India.
Some of its key features include:
The ability to share or receive a downloaded video to/from a someone nearby.
The ability to see how much data any YouTube video will use if you play/download it.
Two different video quality levels, Basic which uses significantly less data (about 5 MB per 10 min video) but is low quality, and Standard (about 22 mb per 7 min video) but is about 480-720P.
The ability to download any YouTube video and view it offline in the two video quality levels for free, as long as you connect to internet at least once a month.
Google has since given no other official information concerning YouTube Go. Yesterday I was curious as to whether I could download the app off of The Google Play Store, it turns out, we can!!
The app is currently in beta, but if you have an Android phone and some time time to kill, I'd say give it a try! It's definitely not as full featured as the regular YouTube app, you can't even subscribe to channels, but it's definitely really cool.
I suspect that when YouTube Go finishes development and exits the beta stage, Google will probably do something along the lines of region lock it in order to prevent North American users from using one of YouTube Red's features for free, but we will have to wait and see.
Anyway thanks for reading everyone and I will see you next time!
