That would be OK is the rules weren't arbitrary, it is not OK to allow native API calls to some and to force to use HTML5 to others, it is inexcusable.
There are no "others" and no "rules". Google makes the iOS and Android apps, not third parties. The Windows Phone YouTube app would be the first significant (1) phone OS to have a YouTube app not made by Google, there are no others to compare Google's behavior on for fairness. This is the first event of its kind.
(1) If you consider single digits market share to be significant.
Actually, there are phone YouTube apps not made by Google, such as Jasmine for iOS, as has been brought up repeatedly. Unlike Microsoft, they complied with the rules, rather than throw a hissy fit.
The rules are arbitrary if Google doesn't abide by them when making publishing its own versions of YouTube apps on the dominant platforms. It's behavior is anti-competitive if it uses its position as gatekeeper to YouTube to stifle Windows Phone by placing requirements on Microsoft that it doesn't place on itself.
The rule exists to ensure the continued compatibility of third-party applications with requirements of the YouTube service. Google can fix its own apps, and it can fix the content of an iframe loaded from its servers, but it can't fix apps it doesn't control.
There are good reasons for this very simple rule that everyone but Microsoft seems able to comply with. By definition, such a rule cannot be "arbitrary".
It's disingenuous to say "everybody but Microsoft" when the group size of third-party apps that act as realistic YouTube viewers is something like 2-4.
If you pride yourself and market yourself on openness any rule that flies in the face of said openness is entirely arbitrary, because there shouldn't be any rules limiting your openness.
It's disingenuous to treat your religious dogma on the word "open" as shared by everyone else. I don't believe for a second you understand how Google is using the term nor what they are applying it to.
>The Windows Phone YouTube app would be the first significant (1) phone OS to have a YouTube app not made by Google, there are no others to compare Google's behavior on for fairness. This is the first event of its kind.
It's also the only significant phone OS that doesn't ship with Google search as the default.
How is this any different than me releasing my code under something like the LGPL, which would allow those folks who dynamically link to not release source to their app, but force those who are required to statically link (due to platform or other reasons) to release source to their app?
Note that it's a similar situation. If I release code under the LGPL, i don't have to abide by it, only others do.
Twitter requires third party API users limit themselves to 100k users (or whatever it is), but, even though they use the same API, does not require it of itself.
They also have decided some folks don't have to abide by this.
How is this different?
None of this is "anti-competitive" behavior.
Would you think it anti-competitive behavior if Google provided no API and also told people finding ways to embed it to stop?
It's anticompetitive because Google is using its dominant online video platform to promote its mobile OS, even though those are really two separate industries. It's no different from MS selling an internet server that uses nonstandard extensions and only making those available on windows.
HTML5 seems to be the only public API they expose, and obviously they don't want random apps to depend on other, possibly undocumented APIs intended for internal use. Google can use any kind of whatever internal API they have in place in their own apps, I don't see why they should follow their own third party usage guidelines.
