Google Pulls YouTube from Amazon’s FireTV

If you turned on your Amazon FireTV and loaded up the YouTube app you would get a notice that the app will stop working starting January 1, 2018. YouTube is of course the world’s largest video sharing site as well as the world’s most popular on-demand video service. So not having it supported on a steaming device is a big deal. Google has said their decision to pull it from Amazon devices was in response to Amazon hampering sales of Google products.

amazon devices

Google has stated that, “Amazon doesn’t carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn’t make (its) Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of (our sister company) Nest’s latest products. Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV”. Google will not only be pulling YouTube from Amazon’s FireTV devices, but also the new Echo Show.

Amazon has responded, “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website.” Google has, in its statement, left the door open for a possible agreement between the two. “We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon,” Google stated.

While currently this seems to be a war or words (YouTube won’t be blocked till 2018 on FireTV), we really hope this does not get any worse. Being a FireTV user myself not having YouTube (where I watch most of my content) is a big deal. I will be forced to have to go to Roku or AppleTV.

About Author