It’s a reminder that these tech companies will fight hard for market share.
SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Tuesday blocked Amazon Show users from seeing YouTube videos, extending a years’ long jousting over access to rivals products.
The move is a reminder that however much consumers might wish for a fully connected Internet, the reality is that companies are constantly fighting for market share.
«Tech has long been a restricted ecosystem, where software had to be written for Windows, or Mac, or Android, or iPhone. We’re now seeing that bleed over in new ways to retail buying choices,» said Frank Gillett, an analyst with Forrester Research.
The 6” by 3” screen on the Amazon Show allows Alexa to answer user’s queries with not just audio but also text and videos. Those include movie previews, weather reports, films available on Amazon Prime and, until Tuesday, YouTube videos.
Google and Amazon have been in negotiations for some months over how Show users could access YouTube videos. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.
Google’s sticking point was that users viewing on the Show couldn’t search, couldn’t share and couldn’t comment on YouTube videos, because the implementation didn’t make full use of its application programming interface, or API.
«Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon,» said Google’s Andrea Faville.
Amazon characterized the break as hurtful to its customers and done without explanation or notification to customers.
This block is restricted to YouTube on the Show. Apps for Amazon Shopping, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Music and Amazon FireTV are still available on the Google Play store.
This isn’t the first time tech companies have faced off over making their material and devices available on other platforms.
Google blocked an app that played YouTube videos on Microsoft’s Windows phone in 2013.
Amazon won’t sell Google’s voice-activated assistant Home or Google’s Chromecast. Home is a direct competitor to the Echo while Chromecast is streaming video content service that competes with Amazon Fire TV devices.
For a time Amazon wouldn’t sell Apple’s TV players because they did not support Amazon Prime Video, though that issue was eventually resolved.
There has been some speculation that this could be a preemptive move by Google as it builds out it Home assistant offerings. While currently Home only has one Echo-like model, industry rumblings make it seem as if an Echo Dot equivalent might eventually be offered in the Home lineup. And from there it’s not too far to envision a Home device that includes video.
