Amazon's YouTube Workaround on Fire TV Works Just Fine (geekwire.com)

Last month, a notification that YouTube would no longer be available through Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices starting Jan. 1 popped up, threatening to leave a huge hole in Amazon's streaming lineup. But just last week, Amazon added the ability to surf the web and get to YouTube via a browser. But does it work? GeekWire thinks so: The result is a simple path to YouTube, circumventing Google's move to pull it from Fire TV. Web browsing probably wasn't a direct response to Amazon's issues with Google, which owns YouTube, but it provides a convenient alternative to keep the service accessible for Fire TV users. The first step is downloading one or both of the web browsers. Opening Firefox leads to this home screen with easy access tiles to both Google and YouTube. On Silk, the home screen defaults to Bing search. But as I poked around, I noticed that YouTube for TV showed up in my bookmarks even though this was the first time I opened the browser. A YouTube interface optimized for TV, the same one you would see on other streaming devices, pops up on both browsers. To sign in, YouTube prompted me to activate YouTube for TV through a phone or computer. Once that process was complete, YouTube showed the same personalized recommendations as my phone and computer.

Comments

Re:For Now...

[Tailhook]

Fix->Block->Fix->Block

Pretty hard to support the arguments of Google et al. re Net Neutrality while this kind of nasty shit is going on. I fully appreciate the fine distinctions, but I also know explaining these subtleties to normals is nigh on impossible. At the end of the day it has every appearance of being just another bunch of corporate rent seekers squabbling with each other, none more obviously noble than the others, and safely ensconced in that stink the Senators from Comcast can back Comcast's FCC chairman with a straight face.