YouTube mobile site promises optimised experience

The firm expects mobile video browsing to overtake desktop browsing in five years

Google has launched a version of its YouTube site for phones running HTML5, promising an improved mobile browsing experience for smartphone and tablet users.

The search giant said that with mobile browsing set to overtake desktop browsing, the site has now been updated and optimised for use on-the-go.

"People want access to videos at all time, and they want to do so as quickly and consistently as possible," said product manager for YouTube for mobile, Andrey
Doronichev.

"With the this new site, users can get the same experience on their smartphones or tablet devices in terms of both speed and functionality as they do on the desktop as we have streamlined the site to work over 3G networks as fast as possible."

With the release Google has added features from the main YouTube site such as like/dislike ratings, the ability to share links with social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Buzz, and the ability to load videos in lower quality to help them load more quickly.

The new site has also been designed to offer a consistent user experience on all smartphone platforms, including the new iPod Touch OS2 and the iPad.

"We expect to see a lot of growth in the use of tablets for accessing YouTube Mobile so we have developed an optimised version for the iPad at present and hope to do so for other tablets on other platforms as they are developed," Doronichev said.

Samsung's Bada platform, as used on that firm's Wave smartphone, is currently not supported by the new site, but Google told V3.co.uk it would support it after the first maintenance release of Samsung's browser.

The site now also comes with a series of large, touch-friendly buttons that make navigation easier by removing the need to scroll or zoom.

Doronichev also took a swipe at mobile manufacturers by arguing that because the site was managed by Google directly, updates would happen far more regularly than those from phone manufacturers who only periodically update native applications.

"There is often a life cycle issue with in-built applications and most will still be offering the old star rating system for videos, for example, where we can provide the new rating system months after it was added to the desktop site in Q1," he said.