Google has announced plans to stop Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices using YouTube from the start of 2018, as a row between the two companies intensifies.
In 2015, Amazon stopped selling several of Google’s hardware products online, including the search engine giant’s Chromecast video and audio-streaming dongles.
In a statement, Google said it had been “trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services” but, “given the lack of reciprocity”, had decided to no longer support YouTube on Echo Show or FireTV.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Google stopped Amazon’s Echo Show speakers playing YouTube videos in September. Techcruch reported that despite efforts on the part of Amazon, the search firm believes its rights continue to be violated because of changes to the way the software operates.
“The dispute disadvantages consumers in two ways,” says the BBC. Users will be unable to access a service that Amazon’s devices had promised to deliver, while Amazon’s refusal to even allow third-parties to sell certain Google products via its site makes it harder to find them at their lowest price.
Speaking to the BBC, Ben Wood from the CCS Insight tech consultancy said it was a “surprising turn of events in both respects”.
“YouTube is all about maximising the number of people who see its content, and Amazon wants to be the so-called ‘everything store’,” he said, but in the end it is consumers who will bear the brunt of commercial tensions between the two companies.
-
How the online world relies on AWS cloud serversThe Explainer Chaos caused by Monday’s online outage shows that ‘when AWS sneezes, half the internet catches the flu’
-
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?Today’s Big Question US-UK tech pact, supported by Nvidia and OpenAI, is part of Silicon Valley drive to ‘lock in’ American AI with US allies
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
South Korea's divide over allowing Google MapsTalking Points The country is one of few modern democracies where the app doesn't work
-
Google avoids the worst in antitrust rulingSpeed Read A federal judge rejected the government's request to break up Google
-
Is AI killing the internet?Talking Point AI-powered browsers and search engines are threatening the death of the open web
-
Amazon's robotaxi looks to be Waymo's biggest competitorIn the Spotlight The company recently opened a new robotaxi production plant in California
-
Unreal: A quantum leap in AI videoFeature Google's new Veo 3 is making it harder to distinguish between real videos and AI-generated ones
