The company has issued a public response to Google’s decision to block its new YouTube app

Aug 16, 2013 06:56 GMT  ·  By

A few hours ago, we learned that Google had once again decided to block Microsoft’s YouTube app, claiming that it violated the service’s terms of service even though the software giant had long tried to comply with all requirements.

Google’s statements on this decision only provide vague details, but the bottom line is that Microsoft’s new YouTube app isn’t exactly the way the search company wants it to be.

Microsoft, on the other hand, claims that Google is actually “manufacturing” reasons to block the application, hinting that it could all be just a response to its very own Scroogled campaign revamped last week.

“It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it,” David Howard, corporate vice president & deputy general counsel, Litigation & Antitrust, Microsoft, explains.

Microsoft claims that Google has asked it to develop a YouTube app based on HTML5, “an odd request since neither YouTube’s iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5,” as Howard explains.

“At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps,” he continues.

In addition, the Redmond-based company claims that his engineers have tried to collaborate with Google on a number of points, but its long-time rival has only provided limited bits of information.

“We’ve asked Google to provide whatever information iPhone and Android get so that we can mirror the way ads are served on these platforms more precisely. So far at least, Google has refused to give this information to us,” Howard explains.

As far as the terms and conditions are concerned, Microsoft says that it’s all because of the aforementioned HTML5 requirement that’s yet to be complied for the Windows Phone app.

“The problem with this argument, of course, is that Google is not complying with this condition for Android and iPhone,” the Microsoft official adds.

In the end, Howard points out that Google is actually trying to give Android and iOS users an advantage over Windows Phone, as both platforms already have a YouTube app in their stores.

“We think it’s clear that Google just doesn’t want Windows Phone users to have the same experience as Android and Apple users, and that their objections are nothing other than excuses,” he concludes.