Google-Microsoft dispute over Windows Phone app grows

MENLO PARK, Calif., Aug. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. tech giants Google and Microsoft are feuding over a Windows Phone application Google alleges blocks development of certain apps.

Google has disabled Microsoft's Windows Phone YouTube application, released just a few days ago to try to bring the YouTube experience to Windows Phone, GigaOm reported Thursday.

In a statement, Google-owned YouTube blamed Microsoft for failing to build the application based on HTML5, mark-up language used for building Web pages and information displayed on the pages, and not fully supporting the requisite HTML5 standards in its mobile browser.

"We're committed to providing users and creators with a great and consistent YouTube experience across devices, and we've been working with Microsoft to build a fully featured YouTube for Windows Phone app, based on HTML5," the statement said. "Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service. It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines."

A Microsoft spokesperson told Verge the company was working with YouTube to resolve the matter.

However, GigaOm reported, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel David Howard later alleged in a blog that Google was creating roadblocks to the app's release.

"It seems to us that Google's reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can't give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting," the blog read. "The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it."

Microsoft rebuilt the YouTube app after YouTube disabled API access to an earlier version in May because the app didn't display ads, GigaOm said. Now, ads are displayed, but Microsoft didn't build the app in HTML5.