Google decided to pass on creating a Meerkat-like app years ago

With how popular live-streaming apps like Meerkat and Periscope have gotten over the past few months, it’s a wonder that nobody thought of making an app like that before. If a new report from the Wall Street Journal is to be believed, however, somebody did think of it: Google. In fact, the company came up with the idea years ago but but decided not to move forward with it due to the limited resources it had at the time.

Google-owned YouTube had a chance to beat Twitter’s Periscope and its biggest competitor, Meerkat, to market by somewhere in the ballpark of 8 years, but decided against the move due to the fact that a large portion of the company’s resources were engaged in fending off a Viacom lawsuit and creating the Content ID copyright detection system. According to the Wall Street Journal, YouTube considered building its live-streaming platform into a mobile application. While the current existing system had been designed for a select few users and required Google’s permission to launch a stream, the mobile app would have featured far fewer restrictions on who could use it and how. Unfortunately, YouTube was also engaged in a legal battle with Viacom at the time over the use of unauthorized copyrighted material that had been uploaded by users. Combine that with the fact that the company was right in the middle of developing the Content ID system it still uses to track and remove copyrighted videos, the project was never fully explored and eventually fell by the wayside.