Microsoft (again) took aim at Google’s YouTube app policies, arguing in a blog post that “we think it’s clear that Google just doesn’t want Windows Phone users to have the same experience as Android and Apple users, and their objections are nothing other than excuses”.

In a blog post attributed to David Howard, corporate VP and deputy general counsel, litigation and antitrust at Microsoft, the IT giant said that there was “one sticking point” in its work with Google: a requirement to work with HTML5.

“At the end of the day, experts from both companies recognised that building a YouTube app based on HTML5 would be technically difficult and time consuming, which is why we assume YouTube has not yet made the conversion for its iPhone and Android apps,” he said.

For that reason, it published a new, non-HTML5 app, “while committing to work with Google long-term on an app based on HTML5,” which Google has subsequently blocked.

The comments come after a long-running dispute between the two, which appeared to have been settled in May 2013, with the two agreeing to work together on a YouTube app for Windows Phone. Google had previously said that Microsoft’s app supporting the video service did not comply with the YouTube terms of service, including in the way ads are served, while Microsoft said that Google had blocked access to metadata needed to improve it.

Howard said: “It seems to us that Google’s reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can’t give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting. The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it.”

“In the meantime, we once again request that Google stop blocking our YouTube app,” he concluded.