Google is the reason YouTube isn't a default app on the iPhone anymore

Kif Leswing
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larry page and tim cook
larry page and tim cook

(Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google cofounder Larry Page.AP / Getty Images / Justin Sullivan)

In 2012, Apple and Google were going through a breakup of sorts.

Apple released a new version of its iOS mobile operating system without the Google Maps or YouTube apps, which had been included on the iPhone as default apps since the first iPhone.

We now know why YouTube was pulled as a default app: Because Google requested it. And it had nothing to do with Apple's decision to make its own mapping software.

Apple wanted to include YouTube on the first iPhone, so it asked Google for special privileged access to the video platform, although it built the YouTube app itself.

But five years later, Google decided to "take back control of our app," according to Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist at Homebrew who worked at YouTube for years.

At the time, many thought it was Apple that kicked Google's YouTube out of its default apps. YouTube now needs to be separately downloaded, and lots of people do it — it's currently the fourth-most-downloaded free app on the App Store.

Walk published his recollections as a tweetstorm on Thursday, and he joked that the "statute of limitations on any nondisclosures" from his time at YouTube had expired.

Here's his story:



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