Google has come of age and India is rejoicing more than ever before. The birthday was moreover a payback period for Google, gifting to users Google Station, a new Wi-Fi platform, and YouTube Go, the data-vasool app, enabling faster streaming of videos for viewers in areas of slow connectivity. While the app has miles to go before entering our smart phones, since the time of announcement, tech circuits have Indianised YouTube Go, courtesy a note posted by Johanna Wright, vice president of product management, YouTube on the official blog.
She describes an experience she faced early this year in Nagpur — how a wrestling enthusiast she met there, when tried to run his favourite video on YouTube, couldn’t play it out of slow connectivity.
“Maybe it was his phone or his 2G connection, but it just wouldn’t work. Unfortunately, this story isn’t an exception for our Indian viewers. They love YouTube and its amazing selection of Bollywood hits, comedy vlogs, cricket matches and — yes — even wrestling. But even as they discover the joys of YouTube, their experience is not great on slower connections and less powerful mobile phones,” writes Johanna.
The new app lets users save videos into offline mode with options to choose quality and file size. Local sharing with no data loss is an added advantage.
A team of engineers, designers and researchers and Johanna toured 15 Indian cities meeting people in a bid to come up with a “faster, more relevant, and more affordable” YouTube app. This is counted as the company’s project for the ‘Next Billion’ programme, where it aims to connect with a one billion of Indian population.
The YouTube Go comes with a set of remarkable features. The selection process becomes less complicated with a home screen featuring regional specific trending and popular videos. A quick preview facility allows a user to get a better idea on the video to be chosen before jumping to play or save it to the device.
In an attempt to seal the speed-related issues, towards the fag end of 2014, Google first launched YouTube offline in India, Indonesia and the Philippines and later went on to win the market in the Middle East. The video-sharing giant again went ‘Smart Offline’ in India by mid-2016 cashing in on the cheaper, off-peak hours to save videos to the offline mode. YouTube Go, when launched, is expected to offer service in multiple Indian languages.
