I think, in the end, the reason it got banned was down to some clause in their terms of use that required them to use web technology in their implementation, wh

I think, in the end, the reason it got banned was down to some clause in their terms of use that required them to use web technology in their implementation, which would have horribly crippled the app, and was not particularly feasible to implement in any reasonable amount of time. Not because Microsoft refused to display ads. There are already public APIs for building a full fledged Youtube client: Youtube Data: https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/ https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/ Youtube Playback: https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference The issue was that Windows Phone 7 & 8 webview didnt support inline video playback, so they couldn't use the public playback API so were asking for access to Google's private APIs. Google declined This has been rectified in Windows Phone 8.1: http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-81-improved-youtube-experience http://www.wpcentral.com/windows-phone-81-improved-youtube-e... So they can now use the public API to build their client.