The never-ending battle between Microsoft and Google continues to roll on, and the sad thing about this little rift is how much the consumer is losing out. Just recently, Microsoft released a new YouTube app for Windows Phone. And, like clockwork, Google blocked Microsoft’s new YouTube app for Windows Phone (again), a move that has garnered a lot of anger from Windows Phone users across the board.

Previously, the biggest complaint Google had with Microsoft’s YouTube app was the lack of advertisements in videos. The new app that was released a few days ago rectified this problem. However, it appears Google still has a problem related to how Microsoft shows ads: Microsoft has not coded in support for targeted ads in its new YouTube app, thus Google simply blocked the app from accessing YouTube.

Furthermore, Google is asking something very strange from Microsoft — the company wants the Windows Phone YouTube to be based on HTML5. The request in and of itself isn’t that strange but, the thing is, Google’s own Android and iOS YouTube apps are not HTML5 based because right now. So why ask Microsoft to do it? We don’t really know.

Here is a snippet from Microsoft’s response:

We know that this has been frustrating, to say the least, for our customers. We have always had one goal: to provide our users a YouTube experience on Windows Phone that’s on par with the YouTube experience available to Android and iPhone users. Google’s objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google’s own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn’t impose on its own platform or Apple’s (both of which use Google as the default search engine, of course).

At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognized that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps.

So what’s the next move for Microsoft? They have no choice but to play the waiting game with Google at this point. It is clear the search giant is hell bent on forcing Microsoft to play by their rules, but that plan might backfire if user anger towards Google escalates.

We believe there’s nothing to worry about here, nor no reason to get up in arms. As a Windows Phone user, I can confirm there are quite a few solid third party YouTube apps in the store, for example, MetroTube. Instead of having a fit over Google’s decision, use a third party app or make use of the YouTube mobile in the browser, it works wonderfully.

[via Microsoft]