One of the benefits of using an official app over a 3rd-party app is stability. Something can change and cause 3rd-party apps to crash, but official apps will be fine. But what about “official” apps made by Microsoft? Turns out they aren’t immune to anything. The YouTube app that Microsoft worked with Google to re-release a couple of days ago is already experiencing its first outage.
Last night widespread reports of errors in the YouTube app started popping up on Reddit. After opening the app a cryptic notification says “Something happened and we’re not sure what.” At first it was unclear whether this was a Microsoft problem or a Google problem, but then other YouTube apps started breaking. MyTube has been having the same problems, which means Google changed something on their end.
Frankly, this is really getting ridiculous. Microsoft took a long time to bring this app back. Did they forget something? We thought this was an official app, but it turns out it’s not any more reliable than a 3rd-party app.
UPDATE: The Verge has shed some more light on the situation. Google has blocked the app because it still violates the terms of use. The two companies were collaborating on an HTML 5 app, but Microsoft went ahead and re-released their YouTube app. Google says “Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience.
[via Reddit]
