By Robert “Bob” Reyes
Common complaints of Filipinos connected to the Internet these days: internet connectivity is expensive, and bandwidth allocation is low. With these issues at hand, a greater number of Filipinos, especially the first-time smartphone users are not enjoying the full potential of the Internet by watching video content online.
These are the issues Google Philippines wants to address as they announce the availability of YouTube Go in the country. YouTube Go is a brand new app, designed by Google from ground up for people to enjoy watching video content even if they have limited data or slow connection. The app allows one to download videos to your phone or SD card and play then at a later time without buffering.
This app works like the regular YouTube application on your Android device, except that when you select a video to view, YouTube Go will ask if want to download it instead. The app will outright tell you the size of the video content based on Basic Quality, Standard Quality, or High Quality.
“We saw that YouTube is well loved in the Philippines. We want to ensure that Filipinos enjoy YouTube to its fullest given the current issues on connectivity and access to affordable mobile data. YouTube Go was designed with the next billion internet users in mind,” said Gabby Roxas, Country Marketing Manager of Google Philippines.
Another cool feature of YouTube Go is the ability for you to share videos with your friends and family nearby without the use of data connection. This functionality is done using Bluetoothand will require the receiving device to connect to the Internet for a security check once the video is received.
The availability of YouTube Go to the Philippines is a welcome relief to budget-conscious prepaid mobile users. One can also tap Google’s Datally, which was launched locally late 2017. Datally is an app that lets people see when games, social networks or other programs are using Internet connections in the background, and then put a stop to it.
With the Philippines included in the list of its first market, YouTube Go is now available in Google Play and can be enjoyed by Filipinos using older devices running on Android Jelly Bean or later.
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https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.mango&hl=en