- YouTube Premium Lite is back from the dead, after seemingly being canceled a year ago.
- Google’s currently running Premium Lite tests in Australia, Germany, and Thailand.
- It’s not clear yet what Google’s long-term plans are here.
YouTube Premium has got to be one of the most contentious paid versions of a streaming service. There’s good reason for that, as it’s unlike most of the rest out there, offering free access to basically everything — if you sit through some ads. And that’s sometimes quite a few ads. Today we’re learning about one way that YouTube is looking to give viewers a way to eliminate those ads without requiring a full-blown Premium subscription, as Google confirms that it’s brought back Premium Lite for some new testing.
Premium Lite, you may remember, was basically a half-priced YouTube Premium plan that got rid of ads, but that was pretty much it — no background playback, no YouTube Music, no extra perks. But for what it was, that might hit the value sweet-spot for a lot of viewers. While it had been available for some nations in the past, we got word about a year ago that YouTube was shutting Lite down.