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Here's the tweetstorm tale of why Google pulled YouTube as a default app for the iPhone

This is why we have the full YouTube experience on our iPhones.

Brett Williams

on June 30, 2017

Here's the tweetstorm tale of why Google pulled YouTube as a default app for the iPhone

If you had an iPhone before iOS 6, you probably remember this setup. Credit: Alex Segre/REX/Shutterstock

When the iPhone launched 10 years ago, it came with YouTube as a default app on iOS 1.

The pairing of the Google-owned video platform and Apple wasn't as odd then as it might seem today — the first commercial version of Android didn't debut until 2008.

But that doesn't mean that the Apple/ Google collaboration was a happy marriage. The YouTube app was created by Apple with little input from the YouTube team, which limited the video viewing experience, much to the chagrin of iOS users resorting to their mobile browser to watch video content on the platform.

That changed in 2012 with the introduction of iOS 6, which launched without the Apple-built YouTube app for the first time, after Google didn't renew its license. This allowed Google to bring its own fully realized version of YouTube to the App Store, but also meant that YouTube was no longer a default app on the phone.

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At the time, it wasn't exactly clear why the split happened. My colleague Chris Taylor, who hated the Apple video player, guessed it was the result of Apple distancing itself from its rival, as it was the same year Maps came as part of the OS, too.

Now, almost five years later we have an inside look at what went down with the split.

Hunter Walk, a notable venture capitalist who was on the YouTube team back in the early days of the iPhone, shed a little more light on the story via tweetstorm, which was spotted by Business Insider. In the tweetstorm, Walk gives us some insight about exactly what went down.

You can read the whole story — according to Walk, at least — below:

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

There you go. A five year old question, answered.

Topics Apple Google iOS iPhone YouTube

Brett Williams

Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.