With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they’re doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn’t be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won’t be able to soon.
It WILL break legacy and underpowered devices, so its likely they won't at least not too soon. Those apps rely on the files hosted on the googlevideo servers, and most that are used are meant for legacy browsers.
I've never pegged Google as particularly giving a shit about legacy support though. They kill things out of the blue without warning or explanation.
For the most used services, legacy support is actually respected by Google.
Google Search still works on Internet Explorer 6 for Windows 98 and XP.
Wonder if that will finally change with web integrity.
What I sent was an old screenshot from the web, but I confirmed it now. Google Search still works on Windows 2000 and IE5 in the middle of 2023