Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google pulled support for its YouTube video service from Amazon.com Inc.\u2019s streaming-media devices, citing the internet retailer\u2019s failure to make Amazon Prime Video available through Google\u2019s gadgets and the recent halt of the sale of some Nest products on its website.<\/p>\n
Google blocked YouTube access via the Echo Show, Amazon\u2019s smart speaker with a touchscreen, on Tuesday and will stop supporting YouTube on Amazon\u2019s Fire TV set-top box on Jan. 1. In a statement, a Google representative said it\u2019s taking the action because the YouTube apps on Amazon products aren\u2019t made by Google, like the YouTube app on the iPhone is, and the retail giant doesn\u2019t sell some Google products, such as Chromecast and Google Home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other\u2019s products and services,” Google said in a statement. In its own statement, Seattle-based Amazon said its gadgets now send users to the YouTube website, and the company hopes to resolve the dispute as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
The rivalry between Google and Amazon has heated up as the search giant and online retailer have moved quickly into hardware and internet services. In the past few years, both have introduced multiple new home devices, including speakers and home-security products. Both have also been pushing their own video and music-streaming services as well as competing video-control platforms. They also both offer corporate cloud-computing services, a market where Amazon leads by a wide margin.<\/p>\n
The video-streaming access fight has been brewing for some time. In September, Google blocked YouTube support for the Echo Show and at the time said Amazon\u2019s implementation “violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience.” This was resolved in November for Echo Show users, when Amazon began forwarding people using that device to a stripped-down third-party app that leveraged the YouTube website, instead of a native app. Then, last month, Amazon pulled Nest\u2019s latest devices, including its cheaper thermostat, from its online store. The Chromecast streaming product was removed from Amazon.com in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cEcho Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube\u2019s existing website,\u201d Amazon said in the statement. \u201cGoogle is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mountain View, California-based Google isn\u2019t the only competitor that has seen its products blocked from Amazon\u2019s site. After being pulled from the No. 1 e-commerce site in 2015, the Apple TV box reappeared on the retail website in September, only to vanish again. Apple Inc., meantime, said Amazon Prime Video would become available as an app for Apple TV by the end of the year, but it hasn\u2019t yet been released.<\/p>\n
Google has pulled support for its YouTube video service from Amazon’s streaming-media devices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":107116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[723,167,2924,2150],"class_list":["post-240918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-amazon","tag-google","tag-streaming","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240918"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240920,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240918\/revisions\/240920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}