Google, the search engine giant, always tries to enhance its services and reach more and more people. It not only attract more users to increase the graph, but always had something for the regular users too. Google in an event, announced a new app, YouTube GO, for its video streaming services, that aims to capture the nest billion generations, who are still lagging in internet connectivity.

Google has done surveys in Asian countries, like India, and found that a large cluster of people are deprived of using YouTube for not having proper connectivity, or upgraded 3G/4G devices. They love to use YouTube and its amazing section of Bollywood hits, cricket highlights, comedy video blogs, and even wrestling. But when they try to discover the joys of YouTube, their experience is not great on steadier connections and less capable mobile phones.

To solve their problems, YouTube has decided to launch a new app, YouTube – GO built from scratch to bring YouTube to the next level.                                                                

According to YouTube, the app has been crafted keeping four key-points in mind: 

·   Relatable – user interface made and video recommendations for the user.

·  Social experience – connecting you with people and content relevant to you.

· Cost-effective – providing transparency and reducing data usage.

· Offline first – also works in low or no connectivity.

Let’s take a look at the detailed features: 

Find related videos right on the home screen  

Well, if you have the older YouTube app, you will be shown content that is prominent in your country, or you can select the category you like to stream, and YouTube will recommend the same to you. If you are hooked to technology, then tech content is all you will see. It is safe to say that with YouTube Go, the content recommendation will be based on what is popular and the videos you enjoy streaming. YouTube Go’s home screen will be populated with the videos that are popular and trending in your area. 

You can preview videos before saving or watching 

There can be times when you want to just see what the video contains before fully playing it. This feature isn’t available on YouTube regular app, but it can be seen on other video streaming services. It is quite handy feature for those who are interested in the samples being presented. On YouTube Go, when a user taps on a thumbnail, it’ll trigger a quick preview of the video. This is a small improvement, but one that will definitely be appreciated.  

We can choose resolution when streaming or saving videos 

This is a very cool feature with the current YouTube app, the ability to save videos for offline playback. On the current YouTube app, you can choose between 360p and 720p. The downside here is that there is no option for a lower resolution, in case all you want is to save your favorite song for offline playback and don’t want to spend too much data on it. 

The solution for this is given comes with YouTube Go. This service will allow you to save videos at 144p, making it easier to get access to content and watch it smoothly in low bandwidth. It would be great if this feature also get included in the regular app. And yes, the offline facility is also subject to availability provided by the channel owners, that they give permission to take videos offline or not, as some channels now don’t allow it. 

Share videos with friends nearby 

Now this is a cool feature added, but I would like to check it in action before I judge that it is the best feature of YouTube Go. 

Being a sports lover, there are so many times when I save my highlight matches clips for offline video, and would like to share them with my friends but, bandwidth becomes an issue. With YouTube Go, viewers will be able to share videos without using any data. Users can send and receive videos instantly using the YouTube Go app. Both the sender and the receiver will need to have the YouTube Go app. The app will use Wi-Fi Direct for the transfer, and we would like to see how entry level smartphones, which are popular among the masses perform, using this technology. 

So, I’d like to conclude that YouTube Go seems to be a great initiative by Google. What remains to be seen is how the people are made aware of the existence of the services. One reason why everyone is aware of YouTube is because the service comes preloaded with every Android smartphone in the market. Will YouTube Go also come preloaded with budget smartphones? Time will tell, as YouTube Go will hit smartphones only in early 2017. As of now, Google is working on an Android version of the YouTube Go app, and no plans for iOS have been shared yet.

Don’t forget to share your views if you use the app in the comments.