Just like we already have some “market share” indicators for browsers, I’d like to have the same for all other program categories. Is it closer to 25% or 75%? Does someone have a clue?Įven more in general, I’d very much like to know the user percentages of all kinds of popular software. In my own case, I don’t see why I should bother with something like that.Īllow me to go a little bit off-topic: for the sake of curiosity, I’d like to have an idea what percentage of internet users actually use this kind of dedicated media download software. I guess some people may need a dedicated “media downloader”. The erasure of privacy and freedom happens one inch at a time. But going full scorched-earth would alert the masses and draw negative press and pushback, so they’re likely taking down projects slowly and quietly.

Tools that make media available for offline usage goes against this imperative and therefore must be nipped in the bud. They’re pushing everything to the “cloud” so an internet connection becomes like a shackle tethering you to Microsoft.

Microsoft wants everything to be a service, tied in some way to an account that can be tracked and monetized. Github is also owned by Microsoft, so while I don’t want to go deep into conspiracy theories, it’s hard to deny there’s a pattern emerging here. DuckDuckGo was recently in the news for censoring certain results including mention of youtube-dl, but it turned out it was actually because of Bing data, which is controlled by Microsoft. Microsoft may also be involved as I wouldn’t put it past them to make some backroom deals to appease corporate media partners. Google has clear motive to crackdown on youtube-dl and any tools which make downloading from Youtube more convenient. If the dev simply lost interest, then there’s no reason to wipe everything, so clearly there was some strong-arming involved. I can only guess, but I have a strong suspicion Google had a hand in this.

Microsoft download manager review