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Google shuts down YouTube Vanced, a popular ad-blocking Android app
Enlarge (credit: Vanced)
YouTube Vanced, a popular mod of the official YouTube Android app, is dead. The project announced its discontinuation over the weekend. The project leaders are being weirdly coy about why the app is shutting down, but The Verge confirmed that a cease-and-desist letter from Google is the reason.
YouTube Vanced, which was created in 2017, is a mod of Google’s Android YouTube app. The developers decompiled Google’s official YouTube app, added additional features, and distributed the resulting code. The primary appeal of Vanced was the ad-blocking feature (the name is YouTube “AdVanced,” but without the “ad”—get it?) and background playback. Along with the copyright infringement of redistributing Google’s proprietary code and infringement of the YouTube trademark, you could consider Vanced a form of piracy since it was essentially a cracked version of the YouTube app that enabled most of the $12-per-month YouTube Premium features for free.
Vanced didn’t just block ads, though; it also added a bunch of community-requested features like a darker dark theme, SponsorBlock integration, and video quality preferences. In addition, Vanced re-enabled YouTube’s removed “Dislike” button and got rid of the YouTube Shorts UI. Team Vanced also released “YouTube Music Vanced,” which made similar changes to the YouTube Music app. Vanced was, of course, not allowed in the Play Store, so an open source “Vanced Manager” app could check for updates, install both Vanced apps, and install a modded version of MicroG so you could log in with your Google account.
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Google “hijacked millions of customers and orders” from restaurants, lawsuit says
Google is being sued by a Florida restaurant group alleging that the tech company has been setting up unauthorized pages to capture food orders rather than directing them to the restaurant’s own site.
Google uses “bait-and-switch” tactics to get customers to place takeout or pickup orders through “new, unauthorized, and deceptively branded webpages,” according to the lawsuit, filed on behalf of Left Field Holdings, a restaurant company that runs Lime Fresh Mexican Grill franchises. On those pages, customers are prompted with large buttons to order with food delivery companies like GrubHub, DoorDash, or Seamless.
“Google never bothered to obtain permission from the restaurants to sell their products online,” the lawsuit says. “Google purposefully designed its websites to appear to the user to be offered, sponsored, and approved by the restaurant, when they are not—a tactic, no doubt, employed by Google to increase orders and clicks.”
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Report: 25% of mobile endpoints have faced malicious apps
In the hands of the right attackers, any exploit could be an effective tool in an attack on a managed or unmanaged mobile endpoint.Read More