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YouTube Go expands to 130 countries and adds a High Quality option
- YouTube Go expands to 130 countries to bring locally relevant content within everyone’s reach.
- The service now comes with the ability to stream or download videos in high quality.
- Users can now share multiple videos at once with friends nearby.
Google has announced the expansion of the YouTube Go app to over 130 countries around the world starting today.
YouTube Go is essentially a ‘lite’ version of YouTube tailor-made for use in low bandwidth networks and on low-end hardware. The expansion comes after more than a year of beta availability in India and 14 other Asian and African nations.
YouTube Go sets itself apart from the standard YouTube app by giving the user a lot more control over how videos are streamed or downloaded. Besides allowing users to download videos for offline viewing, the app also shows a preview of the content so the user can decide whether to watch it or not. Given that there are restrictions on data usage in many developing countries, the app shows the exact amount of bandwidth that would be required for video downloads.
Sharing videos to nearby friends does not consume any data, thanks to a direct device-to-device connection.
YouTube Go also brings personalized video feeds and new sharing experiences. Sharing videos to nearby friends does not consume any data, thanks to a direct device-to-device connection.
The expansion of the service also brings a few new features. YouTube Go now offers high quality streaming and downloads, apart from the basic and standard resolution options. A pull-down of the home screen will refresh the page with new personalized content along with notifications of new videos. Also, users can now share multiple videos at once to friends nearby.
YouTube Go is part of the Go series of apps from Google, built to make the best possible use of mobile data. It is also part of Android Go, which is a lite version of Android built to run efficiently on devices with 1 GB RAM.
YouTube Go has been an enabler in more ways than one and it’s good to the see the service expand to geographies that are currently bereft of high bandwidth connectivity. For now at least, the app is not available in countries with well-developed networks, like U.S., Canada, Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, or England.