TikTok has become a super popular way for people to make fun, short videos using their smartphone, and now Google reportedly wants a piece of that action.
YouTube is said to be planning a TikTok rival called Shorts. A report from The Information claims that Shorts will live inside the existing YouTube app on mobile devices rather than be its own separate app and that it'll launch by the end of the year.
Shorts will purportedly show you a feed of brief videos made by YouTube users. Google is said to be utilizing YouTube's existing catalog of licensed that creators will be able to use as soundtracks for their Shorts videos.
YouTube is already the biggest source of online video on the web, and that could help it to jumpstart its TikTok rival. Building Shorts into the existing YouTube apps for Android and iOS would immediately expose a ton of people to the feature, especially compared if Shorts were its own app. Plus, YouTube already has a bunch of licensed music and lots of existing creators on the platform that it could tap to help Shorts take off.