Downloader: YouTube's mobile site gets a new look, beats up on native YouTube apps

Monday, July 26, 2010

YouTube's mobile site gets a new look, beats up on native YouTube apps

Filed under: Video, Web services, Google, iPhone, Android

For a long time, the best way to watch YouTube on a mobile device has been through a YouTube app, like the one that comes with the iPhone. The mobile site was confusing to navigate, and not all that attractive to look at. Well, that dusty mobile version has been revised into a pretty, easy-to-use, HTML5-friendly site, and it makes a good case for watching YouTube in your mobile browser again.

Part of the new YouTube Mobile website is simply making the buttons bigger, so they're easier to tap on touchscreen phones. It also adds familiar features from the full YouTube site, like liking, unliking and adding to favorites. Focusing on the mobile website means YouTube can update its mobile experience more quickly than native apps, which take a while to update. The site works with iPhone and Android phones so far.

This seems like a subtle knock on Apple for not offering a new and better YouTube app with the iPhone 4. Because the YouTube app comes with the iPhone OS, it doesn't get updated unless the OS gets updated. iOS 4 would have been a good opportunity to do that, but Apple didn't take it. I'm sure Google would have gone ahead with a new mobile site anyway, because they're selling a browser-based strategy for everything these days, but it's still interesting that they framed this update in such anti-native-app terms.

[via CNET]