Welcome back to Gizmodo’s March Madness Challenge for the greatest apps of all time! Yesterday’s competition ended with a shocking result, with Google Earth being eliminated by the ferocious calculator app. We are now in the Final Four and the remaining games will bring some tough decisions. Today’s showdown is a family affair, with both Alphabet-owned giants entering the ring and only one leaving.
If you’re just tuning in, you can read all of our selection criteria for this historic match right here. Check out the full list of contestants embedded below. As always, if you think we’ve missed your personal favorite app, give us a shout in the comments. Now, let’s take a look at today’s challengers.
Here’s how we rated YouTube in the first round:
With 2.5 billion monthly active users and a huge amount of goodwill, YouTube is quite possibly one of the most daunting nominees in our selection. In 2005, the company arguably invented online video as we know it. The first video uploaded to the platform, I’m at the zoo, depicts YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of some elephants while delivering a 19-second rudimentary comment about the elephants. It signaled the dawn of a new world in which even the most mediocre clips could be broadcast to billions of people.
To this day, there is still no shortage of useless, unremarkable videos on YouTube. But through its revenue-sharing program, YouTube has virtually defined what it means to be an online influencer, and users like Mr. Beast produce videos that cost millions of dollars. People use YouTube as their only music streaming (a platform that probably makes it easier to get away with piracy than any other). It has also become a pay-TV platform and a nanny for millions of iPad-owning kids. For better or worse, it has become where many people get most of their news, leading to misinformation being spread time and time again.
Most criticisms of YouTube’s existence can be leveled at other social platforms, but few consider them critical to the Internet’s infrastructure.This is simply this Video platform. If you are watching an embedded video, the video may be hosted on YouTube. TikTok is making great strides, but if you want to find new movie trailers quickly, YouTube is your place.
This is what we last wrote about Google Maps:
Launched in 2005, Google Maps is one of the oldest candidates in the competition, but its age shows no signs of slowing down. If there’s one mobile app that can be said to have made the world a better place, this one is indisputable. The days of printing MapQuest directions were officially over when this bad boy came along. Even Apple hasn’t caught up.
So, reader, what would it be? Should YouTube advance to the final round, or is Google Maps expected to take the crown?
Voting has ended and Google Maps has entered the final round!
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