Happy news for those of you who are fans of LazyWorm's Metrotube app. After announcing that it would no longer be available after the first of the year, the developer has decided to bring it back to the Marketplace, this time, as a free app. In a letter to users, the company explained that they faced a challenge with YouTube's API when trying to obtain high-quality videos from the Google-owned site. They were forced to use a workaround, but found it to be unsustainable in the long term. LazyWorm tried to get support in an official capacity from both Microsoft and Google, but just couldn't work it out, so they originally decided to pull what was widely considered to be the best YouTube app out there.
Since an officially-supported solution could not be found, LazyWorm decided to re-offer Metrotube for free using the workaround. LazyWorm's announcement was short and to the point.
Our goal from the very beginning was to deliver a rich YouTube experience that could be officially promoted by Microsoft (or Google). It was for this reason that we never supported features such as video download or the playback of non-mobile content and why we have spent the past 7 months investigating alternative avenues of delivering the same rich experience via official means.We were truly hopeful that we could resolve these issues however it has gotten to the stage where we've exhausted all of our options. Essentially, we have done everything in our power to go through official channels without any luck. We don't want to see the project that has consumed a year and half of our lives go to waste like this and so we've decided to re-launch Metrotube for free.We hope the app receives a big enough response from the Windows Phone community justifying the need for Google or Microsoft to show us a little more support.
While it's not quite the storybook ending they had hoped for, we here at Windows Phone Central are psyched for Metrotube to return. Perhaps Google will realize that it runs circles around their official app and will decide to support it in some fashion. Metrotube has passed Marketplace certification and should be available within 24-48 hours. We'll update things with a link once it becomes available.
Source: LazyWorm Apps
