Google recently announced that YouTube will be available offline in India. The reasoning for this being that the majority of the country doesn’t have access to high speed internet connections. So, to make YouTube more functional for them there will be the option of downloading the videos that they love so much directly to their phones. This means that users in India will be able to play their videos offline.
Now I’m sure the next question you’re going ask is “What about video rights?” Well, Google will set the video defaults so that the videos can be downloaded, but the user who uploads the video can opt out of that setting so that it can’t be downloaded and played offline. It’s Google’s goal to bring the standard smartphone experience to those in India and by having access to your favorite movies at all times, even without an internet connection, it’s a step in the right direction.
We all have favorite videos on YouTube that we watch to make us laugh, songs we love to listen too, or videos that we like to share with friends and Caesar Sengupta, vice president, product management at Google said, “You find videos you like, you tend to watch them over and over again.” Now, users in India will have YouTube availability at all times so that they can share in the experience just like everyone else. YouTube is taking great steps to ensure that India’s YouTube experience is the best it can be and this only the start.
