It seems Google is all prepared to release its anticipated data-conscious YouTube Go app to the public.
An early version of YouTube Go hit the Google Play Store Wednesday. The app, as promised by Google last year, is light (less than 10MB in size) and features an option to share files using Wi-Fi Direct protocol.
Google announced YouTube Go at an event in India last September. The company is positioning the service as a “faster, and lighter” version of its giant video hosting and streaming service. It’s also an extension to the download feature YouTube introduced to its primary app for offline viewing in 2014.
The app has been built from ground up for the Indian market, taking into consideration the inconsistent and poor internet availability in the country, Johanna Wright, Vice President of Product Management had shared at the time of unveil.
The company is partly addressing this by enhancing YouTube’s offline-feature. On the new app, people get a “super low bandwidth” preview of the video they want to download. The app also shares detailed information on how much data a video consumes.
The app also supports several Indian local languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, and Tamil. The company was hoping to release the app late last year.
