TECH NEWS – Google is fed up with the fact that many people don’t want to pay for YouTube Premium (the official way to watch videos on their platform without ads…).

YouTube Vanced is one of the most popular apps on Android if you often watch videos on Google’s video-sharing platform. Unfortunately, the arm of the law has caught up with the developers, who have announced on Twitter that Vanced is dead: “Vanced has been discontinued. In the coming days, the download links on the website will be taken down. We know this is not something you wanted to hear, but it’s something we need to do. Thank you all for supporting us over the years.”

The Verge pointed out that it was indeed legal reasons that forced the developers to put up the Game Over board. They did add that the app’s current version will work until it becomes obsolete in about two years (and, knowing Google, they will keep changing YouTube to cram as many unnecessary features as possible, not to mention monetization…). So they got a DMCA demand: Google asked the Vanced team to remove all references to YouTube, the logo had to be changed, and all links to YouTube products had to be removed.

Let’s talk about what YouTube Vanced is. It’s an enhanced version of the basic YouTube app, with features that Google would otherwise charge you money for every month. Ad-free video playback (=YouTube Premium for free…), the ability to show the dislike count (which has been removed), the ability to skip sponsor segments within the video, and you can also play videos in the background. These are all features missing from the basic app, which is why Google wants to remove the rival: they’d instead want you to subscribe to YouTube Premium.

Except we won’t.

Source: WCCFTech