Unblock Youku for Chrome

Pros

• Access Youku from anywhere
• No blocking of native ads and other content

Cons

• Slower-than-normal Internet speeds

Unblock Youku for Chrome gives you access to Youku no matter your location.

You may have never heard of Youku. It would not be a surprise. Despite being among the most popular websites online, most people outside of China have never heard of it. Think of Youku as the online equivalent to YouTube but with perhaps more emphasis on traditional content rather than the new breed of content creator and influencer. The reason why so many have never heard of Youku is that the service blocks access to anyone is who not located in mainland China.

Even if you are a Chinese citizen who is outside the country on business or for pleasure, you cannot access Youku directly without taking some additional steps. This is where the Unblock Youku extension for Chrome comes in. Chrome is the most popular web browser used outside of China to access Youku—for reasons we will discuss in a moment—so it comes as little surprise that the most popular, advanced and polished Youku unblocker be developed for the Chrome web browser.

The reason that Chrome is the most popular web browser to access Youku from outside mainland China is because most of its users are not Chinese but rather from countries like the U.S. and UK. That may come as a surprise, but it actually makes quite a bit of sense when you learn that Youku not only hosts Chinese content but rather content from around the world, including the U.S. and UK.

Youku often has major films and television programs that Americans, Brits and other Westerners have to pay for but which are streamed at no charge via the Youku web service! The advantage Chrome offers is that it makes it simple to translate the Youku webpages into English on the fly. The videos do have Chinese subtitles, but these can usually be disabled, which makes accessing Youku via Unblock Youku like accessing a free Netflix that has the latest shows as well as blockbusters that are still in the movies.

Unblock Youku does not block native ads or any other native content. This is important in order to preserve the experience for the Chinese viewer but also because aggressive ad blocking can often undermine services like this. This is an unfiltered experience that you can enjoy how you want.

Unblock Youku may be the best extension of its kind, but it is still a work in progress. Setting it up and getting it to run may not be as seamless as the casual user would like. There are also some bugs, and those bugs can be downright infuriating when you are in the middle of a good movie.

It is also worth mentioning that this approach will provide streaming speeds slower than you would otherwise expect. This is not a deal-breaker for anyone with a quality broadband connection, but if you have a slower connection, buffering issues can cause this extension to be unusable.

Pros

• Access Youku from anywhere
• No blocking of native ads and other content

Cons

• Slower-than-normal Internet speeds