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Microsoft YouTube App Strips Ads; Adds Download
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft appears to be sticking a finger in Google's eye with the launch of its new YouTube app for Windows Phone. The app, ReadWrite has confirmed, strips out YouTube ads when it plays back videos and allows users to easily download video by way of a prominent 'download' button."
Give them a day. I'll bet it stops working tomorrow.
It's about time Microsoft did something nice for users.
Data scraping can work, as long as you have a team that can keep up with changes to the interface and counter various approaches to block the scraping-specific requests. Somehow, I don't think this will work for the long-term on Windows Phone systems - but then again, Windows Phone itself may not last too terribly long in this incarnation either, so it may be fine for its purpose, which is to latch onto low-information customers with shallow but momentary appealing features.
Ryan Fenton
If you don't have a youtube downloader in your browser, it's because you don't want one. And if you're seeing ads in youtube it's because you're not using adblock plus.
Youtube is supposed to paywall some premium content soon, which is fine. I'm not watching it anyway, so I'm not downloading it either. The kind of stuff I download from youtube mostly involves documentaries on subjects like Waco or what kids are eating, and I'm not also streaming it, so there's really no good reason for them to try to stop me.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Getting the direct download link to the video is easy, every youtube app can implement this without any effort. And if you build your own player based on it, ads just disappear as a side-effect.
Sooo can I get xbox live with ADs stripped out of also Microsoft? Seeing as I pay for the service!
Not to be mean to you personally, but we don't fucking care. Just like we don't fucking care that ABC doesn't like us recording shows on our DVRs and watching them later without having to suffer through the horrible, loud, insulting-to-the-intelligence ads. We don't care that Sony and BMG want us to buy entire CDs of music, rather than download songs, or worse yet, find other music to listen to.
So, if your profession is making videos, and your income is based on ads played during those videos on a communal website, you may want to think of a better revenue stream. This one isn't going to last, whether Microsoft can pull this off or not.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Do ad-blockers provide false feedback to the advertisers? Does it download the content and then not display it?
I only ask because I have a desire to:
a) Provide money to the content provider (YouTube).
b) Confuse marketers (scum).
Youtube has ads?
Who knew?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Supposed you want to wish your mother a Happy Dub Step Mothers Day with this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J0o65u73Nc
But you want to strip the adds and go fullscreen:
Easy, simply change the URL: delete "watch?v=" and replace with "v/"
http://www.youtube.com/v/9J0o65u73Nc
sarcasm
Microsoft must have some really smart developers to have figured out how to rewrite the YouTube URL using computer programming. I am going to run out and get a Surface with Windows 8 before Best Buy closes tonight. Microsoft might be adding more useful features soon and I don't want to miss out. It would be a shame to watch a 5 second YouTube Ad and support that rich Google company. Microsoft is sticking it to man! Wait, I thought they were the man. Hmmm... something has changed. I'm so confused.
sarcasm
A company and a society are judged and remembered by what they build and not what they destroy.
Exactly. This is settled case law, beginning with the VCR. What comes to your device can be "time-shifted", meaning you are free to save ANYTHING which legally comes to your device, and play it back later. What used to be called "taping" is now, these days, known as "downloading" and the law is crystal clear about the legality of these actions.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
That does not remove the ads...
No, they really don't owe it to you.
How much do you pay Google anyway, and for what? Most people pay only by consuming the increasingly-obnoxious ads. I think the ads on youtube are atrocious. But I'm pretty sure they do not, in fact, owe you an ad-free youtube. What are you, majority shareholder?
I pay a lot of money for my Internet service. Doesn't mean they owe me grocery delivery, or any other random thing I'd like and that their service happens to enable in a tangential way.
Youtube can say whatever they want. Whether it is enforceable is another matter.
Saving a YouTube video for later playback on your own machine (i.e. not distributing) is simply "time shifting"... time shifting has been tried time and time again in the courts and it is settled law. What legally comes to your device can be saved and played back at a later date (aka "taping" and now "downloading") and Google can TOS till the cows come home but no TOS ever written and tested in court has ever abridged the right of anyone at any time to time shift.
In other words, download all you want. Rip it to DVDs/CDs. Play it back a million times. Put it on all your devices. There's not a goddamned thing Google, or anyone, can do to stop you... they can add stuff to their TOS from now until doomsday but it does not matter in the least.
Re-distribution is another matter of course.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
You seem to forget that Google could easily use the three magic words that nullify hundreds of years of precedence. "On a computer"
fine... open your wallet... takers are SOOOO annoying.
I fucking wish I could pay as little to watch a TV show or movie as a comparable set of ads would return in revenue for being in front of my eyeballs.
Instead, some dickhead thinks I should pay ~5-10 cents a minute to watch one episode of his TV show. Naturally, 1080p costs twice as much too.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
If Google doesn't decide to ignore this, I would suggest they license the rights to the Rick Aston video, detect if the connection is coming from this software and RickRoll anyone using it.
The total market however more than doubled in that time. Apple is still gaining market. It's just losing it's fractional share of unit sales.
If instead you measure the market in revenue, rather than unit sales. Then apple is rising in fractional market share. Moreover It's margins are also vastly higher. So in terms of profit it has a majority of the market.
There have been extensions for this, on various browsers, for years. I don't see how this is sticking anything to Google when any idiot user can install a few extensions to his browser and get the same result.
Not news. More like Olds.
I sometimes end up at a browser without adblock plut. It's like a totally different internet. (One that should be killed with fire.)
Microsoft Tax? EAS is royalty-free, license fee-free and has a patent covenant-not-to-sue so long as it's implemented correctly. Continuing to support it would have cost Google nothing other than the man hours to keep it working. There was no "Microsoft Tax".
lol wut? No it isn't.
"Microsoft licenses the patents for Exchange ActiveSync please contact us for more information."
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/legal/intellectualproperty/IPLicensing/Programs/exchangeactivesyncprotocol.aspx
"Earlier today Google announced Google Sync, which is made possible by a patent license they obtained from Microsoft covering Google’s implementation of the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol on Google servers."
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2009/feb09/02-09statement.aspx
Did you even bother to search before you posted that? Or did you just feel like making up crap for giggles?
What exactly is being stolen from Google? Much of the content on YouTube isn't owned by Google or even licensed to Google, yet Google runs ads before content that often gets uploaders flagged for copyright infringement (old music videos for example). Google makes money off the properties of others.
Google makes money by facilitating access to property that youtube users want the public access. Youtube is a facilitator, Google earns money off the leechers that youtube user's content attracts and in return youtube users get to publish stuff for free to a much larger audience than they could otherwise easily attract without without paying up significant amounts of money. That's what scientists call a mutualistic relationship since both participants benefit, not a parasitic one as you are rather snidely implying. Google is not a charitable organization, Youtube has massive overheads, Google is under no obligation to operate Youtube at a loss as a public service for your benefit. If they are pissed off at Microsoft showing Youtube content without ads and providing a download button they can block all Windows Mobile OS users. This raises some interesting questions though because Firefox, for example, has several Youtube download plugins and a whole slew of adblocker plugins available. Will Google also block Firefox users? I installed Ghostery on my Safari browser and I could install an adblocker if I wanted to. Will Google block all Mac and iOS users as well?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
You must have a mechanism for dealing with claimed copyright infringement.
*flexes middle finger*
My mechanism is working just fine.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
Windows 8 tablets have, what, 2% of the market? It might be a while before Google even notices!
No you have it backwards. If you don't want to be part of the culture, lock up your content and don't show it to anyone. If someone can see it, they can tell someone about it, sharing in its most basic sense. *GASP* without paying you!
I say you make your works private and then you can have them all to your self! no one will get your precious content in any way you deem unfit! Perfect solution.
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