Amazon and Google Announce Official YouTube Apps to Launch on Fire TV; Prime Video App Coming to Chromecast and Android TV

Amazon and Google have worked out their differences. On Thursday, they announced that official YouTube app will soon make a return to Fire TV devices and Fire TV Edition smart TVs. Additionally, Prime Video app will be coming to Chromecast and Chromecast built-in devices. "In addition, Prime Video will be broadly available across Android TV device partners, and the YouTube TV and YouTube Kids apps will also come to Fire TV later this year," Amazon said.

Meh. Who cares?

[jdharm]

Yeah, that little tiff was annoying, but the YouTube Moble site worked just fine in Firefox for FireTV.

I care.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having Prime Video on the Chromecast was annoying. Seemed like a waste to have to power up my PS4 to play Prime videos on the teevee.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, that little tiff was annoying, but the YouTube Moble site worked just fine in Firefox for FireTV.

It didn't work as well as the native client (more load time, more buffering, whole page loads AND THEN LOADS AGAIN every time I load it) and also Firefox on Fire TV shows the new tab screen every time you launch, even from the Youtube icon, so that it can show you ads (Pocket.) I'll be glad to remove Firefox from my Fire TV Stick.

Why use an app?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather use the web site than an app that takes up memory, storage space, and silently exchanges network packets in the background and nags me to update

Re:

[omnichad]

Then why have a set top device at all? I like being able to use a simplified remote control and of that's the price, so be it.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

Sure but in that case why not use the built in app on the TV?

Because I was smart enough to get a TV without that crap built in, you insensitive clod!

Re:

[omnichad]

Most of them are awful or slow compared to what you can get on a Roku. But then, the Roku never had any of these disputes.

This is encouraging news for society

[JoeyRox]

If two monopolists can agree to cooperate for their mutual benefit over consumers then surely there is hope for peace in the Middle East.

Sigh

[ledow]

As far as I'm concerned, they were both stupid to engage in such tit-for-tat.

Amazon Prime won't let me Chromecast? Oh, well, I'll buy a movie on Google Play then. If I absolutely needed to, I could suffer loading it up on a desktop browser and casting it from there.

But the restriction only made me annoyed at the people implementing the restriction, not the other party. If Amazon Prime app won't allow Chromecast, I blame Amazon. Especially when it used to / could have it quite easily.

I have Prime. I have a Google Play account full of movies too. I have a Chromecast, I don't have an Amazon Fire. Who do you think got hurt there? If I had an Amazon Fire and something Google didn't work, who do you think I'd blame? It's one of a) Google didn't bother to make it work or b) Amazon blocked it from working.

The restrictions just annoyed consumers. I was actually set to buy a Chromecast from Amazon when they announced they were going to stop selling them. No problem. I bought one from the Google store instead. That really worked for you, didn't it?

And in the end we all knew the spat would finish eventually because it's too large ecosystems, neither of which are going to admit defeat.

As far as I'm concerned, it's no different from the Apple monoculture. Sure, Google, I may use your product but that will NEVER mean I'll use your products exclusively. Integration with other systems and support of them will ALWAYS be a selling point, and lack of that will hurt you. As such don't expect me to only ever use a FireTV stick to play my Prime movies or a Chromecast to play my Google Play movies. The reason I even have both is so that I've always got something to watch if one of them is down.

Same with Kindle vs Google Play Books, Steam vs anything else, etc.

Trying to trap a modern consumer into a monoculture is a really stupid thing to do, especially when your competitors have stuff that's just as good. If you were literally orders-of-magnitude better than others, have services nobody else has, and patented it all so nobody could ever follow, then you might just get away with it. Otherwise, I'll just shrug and do-without, move-on.

And, no, sorry, but there isn't a company on the planet that's that good. Hell, I own a piece of software that's Airplay, Chromecast and Miracast compatible purely because of such game-playing. I will literally *pay money* for integrated services between vendors, even to a third-party. What I won't do is buy into your monoculture.

Re:Sigh

[omnichad]

In the end, they were just driving Roku sales. They play everything without any disputes.

Re:

[bgrahambo]

At least they used to. Roku has endangered their position as a neutral platform by deciding to compete with their own streaming services. Amazon had already killed their Twitch Roku app last year. Possibly more on the way if they see Roku Streaming Channel as a threat.

Re:

[kingbilly]

A year ago I went to setup a Roku for my father and it forced us to create a login. And to do that without adding a credit card required jumping through even more hoops. Perhaps that was related to the push for their own streaming? Either way, it was so frustrating as the interface wasn't exactly perfect. Then you get to deal with password requirements and all the nonsense.

For once, can't we have a streaming device that stays out of our fucking way and doesn't ram its own dick down our throats?

Kodi

[AVryhof]

I just used Kodi to watch YouTube on my Fire TV the few times I actually wanted to watch something from YouTube on TV. Of course, it will be nice to be able to search by voice rather than having to type in what I'm looking for.

great.

[SuperDre]

Not having youtube on firetv wasn't a real problem, but not having primevideo on chromecast was.. So I know a lot of people who are very happy when they can finally natively cast primevideo to their chromecast.