About a month ago I was working on The Gives (https://the.gives), a web app that lets you watch YouTube videos with others while video chatting with them.

The app was pretty simple, search for YouTube video through it (I was using YouTube's search API) select one of them and get a magic link, share that link with a friend and you'll both watch that video (in sync) while video chatting with one another.

Things worked great until I published it on HN. It got to the front page and enjoyed a good amount of visitors. And then it broke.

That's how I learnt about YouTube's search quota limit. I was under the impression the thing should last for a daily usage. Turned out I was wrong.

I have contacted YouTube that same day, they have a pretty lengthy form you fill for quota requests. I filled that form and waiting.

And waited.

And waited a bit more, until I got an email from them asking for more explanations. I don't know what they wanted to know more as the app was DEAD SIMPLE, but I needed the quota increase so I provided them with everything I thought was relevant.

I sent that email, and continued waiting. And waiting. And I'm still waiting.

I find the way YouTube is handling this is really unfortunate. YouTube's API offers some great abilities that allow for some interesting products. But YouTube doesn't seem to care about it. That's very disappointing.

Anyhow, today I removed the search feature from the app (you can now only paste YouTube videos to get the magic link). I also open-sourced the project, you can check it out here: https://github.com/dutzi/the-gives

Has anyone else experienced this?