Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Is Now Available On Amazon's Fire TV, Bringing YouTube Access With It (techradar.com)
Mozilla has announced that its Firefox web browser is now available on all Fire TV devices. While navigating web browsers on televisions isn't the most user-friendly experience, it could be the only way users can access YouTube. Earlier this month, Google pulled YouTube off the Fire TV and Echo Show since Amazon stopped selling several Google products. TechRadar reports: Though there's no explicit 'hey, this is a convenient workaround' section in Mozilla's announcement of the news, there is a section of the blog post which states that users can "go to YouTube and other sites directly from the Firefox for Fire TV home screen" and another which promises access to videos from "YouTube and other popular sites." While the companies are currently in talks to resolve their disagreements, Google's threat to pull YouTube access from the Fire TV line on January 1, 2018, is still hanging over Amazon. This threat is, however, now carries slightly less menace if Firefox browser access remains a workaround.
A decent level of tech savvy is required to know the nature of the issue, and to know of the existence of a means to resolve it.
Remember, most people who look for a work-around use Google or YouTube. As Alphabet/Google controls both entities, it can affect how accessible work-arounds are.
One day the whole concept of advertisement will be forbidden as transfats in food or ganja from the stores, that is as a vile violation of human health. In this case: mental health.
Endless repetition (hundreds of times) of the same utterly useless crap to the ears of the same person should be declared a crime.
I hope to live to that day when you can enjoy the site of the Flatiron building without flashy animated posters splattered over all corners of Times Square, so I can turn TV on and watch a full episode of Frasier in 20 minutes instead of one hour.
Try turning off ADP and NoScript on your Firefox for a day. It's like if you put your glasses on in They Live. Myriad of annoying visual and audio pests coming at your face with persistent of steppe locusts. Incessant barrage of useless repetitions.
It's your brain, people. Protect it at all costs, don't get it washed by Pepsi Cola concoctions.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The spirit of Net Neutrality is what might have influenced Google's position.
Right now Google owns the largest provider of "free" streaming content on the internet. Restricting a hardware provider from accessing that content isn't neutral.
Although, I had forgottent that Amazon is guilty of a terms of use violation. This all began because Amazon was selling an "ad free" device without any other means of compensating Google/YouTube and channel owners for the service itself. Firefox may indeed be a work-around, as log as it plays the ads it is supposed to play.