Update: Google Play Newsstand paid content access is now live in India. Android users can now go to Play Store on their Android devices or Google Play website to subscribe to news sources.
Earlier: Google has announced that it is bringing offline access to video sharing website YouTube as well as paid Play Newsstand content to India soon. There is no word on the YouTube offline access will go live but premium Play Newsstand content should become available to Indian users tomorrow.
Talking about the Newsstand first, Play Newsstand is a news reader from Google, which allows users to read content from various free and paid sources. Until now, only free content has been available to the Indian users but that is changing tomorrow, when the consumers in the country will be able to buy or subscribe to paid Newsstand content. With the latest expansion, Google Play Newsstand paid content will now be accessible in a total of eight countries.
Google has also revealed that it has partnered with 30 content provider in India to make the service locally relevant. Some of these partners are NDTV, ABP News, HT, India Today and Mint.
Coming to YouTube offline access, the feature will only be available to Android users initially and they will be able to cache favourite videos on YouTube Android app for later viewing. The specifics on how this is going to work are still unclear but it is most likely that the YouTube app will provide the users with a pin option, which will keep the cache videos in the phone/ SD card storage as long as the user wants it. Such pinned videos will only be accessible via the YouTube app to avoid piracy issues.
We will let you folks know as soon as these services go live in the country.
FYI, its live now.
By far the single most important new feature of the YT app for bandwidth starved Desis like yours’ truly LOL!
But as far as that newsstand ‘paid content’ part is concerned, there’s no way Google is getting a dime from most of us kanjus/garib folks LOL! 😛