YouTube Allows Video Downloads

21st January 2009

For the first time since its inception, YouTube has decided to allow users to download content from their site.

One of the first event videos to feature this service, was Barack Obama’s speech when he was sworn in as the 44^th President of the U.S.A. Users who visited the Change.Gov channel on YouTube were allowed to play as well as download the proceedings of the day, from a “click to download” link on the bottom left hand corner of the video.

Obama at the Lincoln Memorial

At present, the service only allows downloads from YouTube but not from videos embedded on other sites. This could change in the future though.

By officially allowing downloads from the site, YouTube will be able to further fortify their position in the video-sharing market. This facility will, of course, be free of charge.

In the last few weeks, the subsidiary of Google has gained in importance as Google’s own online video portal Google Video has announced that they will stop accepting new uploads.

Google is also trying to further augment their income through the video-sharing site, and in order to achieve this they have just launched a series of revamped home page ads and will also expand the library of videos available to download. Last month YouTube had also launched a new High Definition section on their site.

The decision to allow downloads of their videos will give a lot of portability to YouTube, or in other words, users will be able to access these videos on all types of screens including computers, televisions and portable media players, even in the absence of an Internet connection.

Tags: obama, tv, video, youtube

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One Response to “YouTube Allows Video Downloads”

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sunaren2001 : 28 January 2009 at 11:35 am

Hey, that’s a good news!
but I do not see any link to download the videos on Youtube.com.
Is this only for new videos or we can download the old ones as well?

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