After yanking YouTube TV from the Roku platform in April, Google was preparing to pull its main YouTube app from the Roku platform on Dec. 9.
UPDATE 12/8: Crisis averted. Roku today updated its original blog post to say that a deal has been reached. „Effective today, we have agreed to a multi-year extension with Google for YouTube and YouTube TV. This agreement represents a positive development for our shared customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available for all streamers on the Roku platform,“ Roku says. Original Story 10/21: If you own a Roku streaming-media player and you haven’t yet added Google’s YouTube app, now would be a good time to do it. The Roku app for the most-viewed video site in the US will exit Roku’s platform on Dec.9, as negotiations between Google and Roku remain at an impasse. It’s a dispute Roku warned about in a post on its corporate blog Thursday morning and in a separate notice to customers before providing additional details to me over a Zoom call hours later. News of the Dec.9 deadline came in a tweet from Axios media writer Sara Fischer, who relayed Google’s response to Roku’s post. But the YouTube app on a Roku player offered viewers no heads-up on Thursday morning, and YouTube’s blog has not mentioned it since April. The Google statement, since sent to PCMag as well with a request that it not be attributed to anybody by name, accuses Roku of “unproductive and baseless claims” without elaborating. But it confirms that existing copies of the YouTube app will keep working. Interfering With ‚Independent Search Results‘ Roku’s post notes that it prefers content partnerships “built around mutually beneficial terms”—read: revenue sharing—but says the squabble over the YouTube app isn’t about money. “We have not asked for a single change in the financial terms of our existing agreement,” it says. “In fact, Roku does not earn a single dollar from YouTube’s ad-supported video-sharing service today, whereas Google makes hundreds of millions of dollars from the YouTube app on Roku.
