Over the past couple of years, Google has been recognizing India, as one of its key markets, and has been treating it accordingly. The Mountain View company even went as far to launch phones specifically designed for the Indian budget, with the Android One program.
The recently launched instant messaging app, Allo, was first launched in India, before it was made available in other Countries.
Now Google has launched a new app for watching and sharing videos offline in India, and it’s called YouTube Go. Whether the name was inspired by Pokémon Go is unclear, but here’s what the new app is for.
Google says it built YouTube Go, from scratch for one reason, offline videos. Google has a tagline for the app, ab Mazze udao, data nahin! Maximize your fun without burning up your data.
Even with the rise of Reliance Jio and other 4G services, many people in our Country still rely on slow networks for their online usage. This is what gave birth to YouTube Go, which is designed to function with low speeds to no connectivity.
YouTube Go will offer the user various features, like a preview function which shows what the video is about. The user can view this, and then select to play the video, or better yet save it on the device. Now, there is another problem which the app has to tackle, storage space. Most Android devices do not come with a microSD card, and rely on internal storage for saving all content. Fortunately YouTube Go allows you to choose the resolution you want to save the video in. Low quality resolutions will use minimal storage, as opposed to standard or higher quality resolutions.
Discovering new videos is easier thanks to the app’s homescreen, which will feature trending and popular videos, in the user’s location. This will probably help in watching videos in regional languages.
Speaking of local videos, you can use YouTube Go to share videos with your friends, even when you are offline, without using data. This is possible using Bluetooth connectivity.
This is the YouTube Go icon:
The YouTube Go app is not available just yet, but you can sign up for it, by visiting the official website at youtubego.com/signup. Google says it will roll out YouTube Go to more people (likely other Countries) over the next few months, before a more wide rollout early next year.
Thanks Krish for the tip.
