YouTube develops its own iOS app

YouTube (which is owned by Google) announced it was releasing its own mobile app for the iPhone and iPad this week. This comes after an announcement by Apple in August that the next version of iOS would not ship natively with YouTube as it has in the past.

When the first iPhone was released in 2006, it would be a year before Apple announced the App Store. That first year the iPhone came with several native apps including YouTube and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Maps. Google and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) were friends and allies, but that was before Android. Now Google and Apple are going toe to toe in the mobile space, and that means that Apple is no longer going to support Google natively on its platform.

Therefore, Google had to rectify the situation. Given that YouTube is the standard bearer of online video services, regardless of the petty tiffs between platforms, my guess is that most users are still going to want access to Google services and that regardless of what Apple may offer as an alternative, people are still going to want to use YouTube.

The maps service could be another matter, but unless the new native Apple maps app is really good, people will probably gravitate back to Google.

I downloaded the new app to my iPhone and found that it's much more visually appealing than what Apple had been offering natively, using bright pictures for instance, in the featured video display list. The native app is just a list with thumbnails.

Google has also included the ability to speak a search term which is available across many of their other services on iOS.

Overall, Google appears to have improved the app and that suggests it's probably been holding back for some time as the mobile battle brings further separation of these two companies.

The tools are available immediately for download from the App Store.

For more information:
- see the YouTube blog announcement

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