The vast majority of Google’s iOS apps have not been updated since early December. A trio of smaller Google apps saw new versions at the end of last month, while YouTube for iPhone and iPad was updated this evening.
Following the latest YouTube release (15.49.4) on December 7, iPhone owners are seeing version 15.49.6 tonight. The release date is officially February 13, making the weekend update very strange by Google. As usual, the YouTube team continued its practice of using generic release notes:
Bugs fixed, improved performance, drank too much coffee
While it is normal for technology companies to pause their work during the winter holidays, updates generally resume in mid-January. Some speculated that the lack of releases was due to the app’s nutrition labels, but YouTube filled out the Privacy section of the app long before this update today.
In fact, the YouTube family (music, TV and studio), except for children, was updated with Apple’s requirement in early February. Google has publicly declared its commitment to add labels, and the current count is more than a dozen apps:
As Google’s iOS apps are updated with new features or to fix bugs, you’ll see updates on our list of app pages that include the new App Privacy Details. These labels represent the maximum categories of data that can be collected – that is, if you use all the features and services available in the application.
The YouTube update comes when iPhone owners earlier this week encountered a message “This app is out of date” when trying to sign in with a Google Account. There was no real security problem and the warning was removed quickly.
Hopefully, other updates to the Google app will come soon. The latest Chrome for iOS is noticeably 24 days behind schedule, although feature parity has not been lost due to the server-side update nature of most Google services. For example, the Google app has had a major redesign of how Search results are displayed in the past month.
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