It's rare that Google do something anti-awesome.
Sometime late last year, I discovered YouTube has a basic (but well-featured) video editor built into YouTube - which has been there for a decade... They've
recently decided to discontinue it, as of the 20th of September 2017 - which is the anti-awesome part. I'm sad, because I'd mentally flagged it as a "killer feature" to introduce to teachers as we start to go beyond the very basic use of GSuite for Education features.
The real killer of this change is that it was one of the few ways K-12 schools could leverage across several platforms - notably Chromebooks - to edit video for free.
Indeed, it seems to be one of the
only options to edit video on Chromebooks, so schools that have gone heavily in for Chromebooks will be particularly sad. Later generation models
that support Android apps may have a few options, but the limited storage onboard Chromebooks will make it hard for budding videographers!
Google Connect has a thread
calling for the retention of the feature. You may want to upvote it!
Google cites poor uptake, but this is probably primarily because it's an obscure feature, and many people quickly graduate onto "better" software (or don't edit at all). Of course, schools with small budgets, and especially those with Chromebook programmes, will really suffer from this change, as video is a popular medium to enrich teaching, learning and project work. Perhaps being Flash-based is the final "death knell", but it's a shame they don't consider HTML5 or some similar framework - which would also open it up to iPads.
Please Google/YouTube, reconsider!
