Well here’s an interesting conflict, the popular YouTube app Vanced is being shutdown. The interesting bit here is that the one calling for the shutdown is none other than YouTube’s parent company, Google. The creators of Vanced announced that the project will be shutting down in a few days, with app store download links already set to be removed. Owners of Vanced only say that the project was discontinued “due to legal reasons”.

Vanced Off The Wall

In case you haven’t heard, Google had recently sent cease and desist letters to the owners of Vanced, forcing developers to stop the distribution and development of the app. One admin from Vanced shared with The Verge (via Discord message):

“We were asked to remove all references to ‘YouTube’, change the logo, and remove all links related to YouTube products…”

You can check out the official Tweet announcement here.

For a little more context, Vanced is a popular third-party YouTube Android app. It allowed YouTube users to block all video ads on YouTube without having to buy the Premium subscription. Vance featured a ‘True Black’ theme and other customizations not offered by the official YouTube mobile app.

Vanced isn’t the only one to suffer Google’s legal wrath; the app is but the latest casualty in the long list of other third-party apps that access YouTube. On this note, YouTube has already forced two of the largest Discord music bots to shut down last year, while Google then started testing ad-supported YouTube integration into Discord just weeks after. Hmm, that does sound a bit scummy, doesn’t it? Then again, taking out the competition only to replace it also sounds like a logical move. However, on this particular topic, let’s stick to the “scummy” identifier.

To confirm, Vanced also wrote this Telegram message that reads: “Vanced has been discontinued, we know this is not something you wanted to hear, but it’s something we need to do.” It’s a humble concession, given that as an indie developer group, going against a tech giant the size of Google equates to folly. Then again, with enough evidence, the Vanced group could counter-argue that Google could have been domineering and asserting its superiority to gain an unfair advantage over smaller players.

The Wrap

Regardless of how one would view this personally, to us, it’s simply another form of corporate bullying – a larger company forcing a smaller group into submission. It’s not like Vanced was using its service to undermine Google’s network and profits; they simply wanted to give people the convenience of not being interrupted by ads without having to sign up for premium. Make no mistake, even if Vanced was there, users still made the conscious decision to sign up for premium just for the perks, so this is really starting to sound more like a ‘Money Matter’ for Google, where every cent counted.

This case reopens our eyes to the hidden tragedy in social media – it’s hard to establish new businesses that either make use of assets from larger companies or have heavily similar offerings. While regulations exist to supposedly ‘balance things out’, they can also be abused to stamp out smaller players.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/36502CP