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Google Just Broke Amazon's Workaround For YouTube On Fire TV (cordcuttersnews.com)
Google has cracked down on Fire TV users once again. Today, the technology company blocked Silk and Firefox browsers from displaying the YouTube.com interface usually shown on large screens. Cord Cutters News reports: Now if you try to access YouTube.com/TV on a Fire TV through the Firefox or Silk browser you will be redirected to the desktop version of the site. According to Elias Saba from AFTVnews, "By blocking access to the version of YouTube made for television browsers, Google has deliberately made browsing their website an unusable experience on Amazon Fire TVs, Fire TV Sticks, and Fire TV Edition televisions." This fight over YouTube and Amazon has been going on for some time. The standoff heated up in early December as Google announced plans to pull the YouTube app from the Fire TV on January 1st 2018. Amazon responded by adding a browser to allow access to the web version on the Fire TV. Now Google has countered by blocking the Fire TV's browsers from accessing the made-for-TV edition of YouTube.com. Back on December 15th, The Verge reported that Google and Amazon are in talks to keep YouTube on the Fire TV, but as of today it looks like nothing has come from these talks.
apparently access to tv version was already restored: http://www.aftvnews.com/google...
IMO it looks like a public trial of the blocking system to intimidate amazon in their talks.
Google is doing this because Amazon refuses to sell Google devices. Go on amazon, search for chromecast for example. First thing that comes up is Amazon Firestick... then a bunch of other streaming devices, none of which are chromecast that you searched for.
More like:
Amazon stopped selling Chromecast and other devices that don't "support" Amazon's streaming service, years ago. Amusingly (and childishly), they also stopped allowing third-party listings of the device. It was as if it didn't even exist.
The trouble with this is that Chromecast doesn't support anything. It's just a tiny little Chromium machine that runs apps, and those apps are generally those that play streaming video.
Because of this particular ecosystem. it is up to the content provider to support Chromecast, not the other way around. This fact makes Amazon's refusal to sell Chromecast a red herring.
After Google killed Youtube access for Fire TV users, Amazon started selling Chromecast again, which is certainly not coincidental. Amazon implemented a workaround for the lack of Youtube access, and Google is apparently now playing (like a cat with a mouse) with killing their workaround, too.
(Meanwhile all I want is for Amazon to let me stream Amazon movies on Chromecast. If Pornhub can have official support, so can Amazon. (Except I can't shop on Amazon with Chromecast, so they don't like it. But I never wanted the ability to buy things with a television anyway.))
Kid-proof tablet..
It's 100% Amazon's fault.
- Amazon's prime video even on android requires installing amazon store app... for a long time it didn't exist at all
- Amazon refuses to make an app for chromecast/google cast for prime video, google can't do it on their own...
- Amazon refuses to sell google devices (some thermostat thing, chromecast, phones, etc..)
- Amazon cuts youtube and does its own voice commands and overlay which violates youtube service agreement (can't modify)
Google retaliates:
- You only get desktop version of youtube on Amazon devices (it's fair.... it's their service, don't amazonify google's youtube, it's not yours, but feel free to use it as is).
So there's a difference between "We will not sell your devices or write software for your devices AT ALL" and "We will only allow you to show our unmodified desktop version of our service". One is not at all, the other is you still get most of it.... Who's being the bigger d...k here?
I went to Amazon, searched for "Google Pixel" and the first result was the Google device I searched for.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
No, Google isn't the problem here. Amazon is trying to keep their content off of everyone else's platforms, while retaining everyone else's content.
Total fucking bullshit. You can watch Amazon content on all the most popular platforms.
Google just wants to spy on you, they're generally very happy to do so in an accommodating cross-platform way.
So why are they blocking the Youtube app on Prime? Which, by the way, runs Android! This is not only an attack on Amazon, and on users, but also on Android, which they control! The daft bastards are attacking their own reflection!
Amazon wants to spy on you and be a monopolistic walled garden.
Google has a web store where they sell Android devices. In that web store, they only sell Google-branded devices. It is completely discriminatory. It promotes their Android devices over all the other Android devices, because it is the only official web store from the owners of Android. This argument is literally over Amazon not being willing to carry Google-branded Android devices in their store. Google has enshrined their Android products over everyone else's by creating that web store, and now they want Amazon to help them defeat Amazon's own Android-based products by putting them in their store as well. And since they refuse to carry them, which is reasonable because of Google's undue influence over Android (Operating Systems must belong to the users, in effect, not used to bludgeon them) then Google sees fit to punish them by restricting access to content which the internet depends upon.
Google controlling the operating system and the content is exactly like ISPs who are also content providers controlling the internet connection and the content. They control both the content, and the means by which you consume the content, and they are attempting to force you to consume their content first. Every Google-branded Android device is a means of shoving a Youtube app in the user's face whether they go looking for it, or not. But you have long been able to install a Youtube app on your Fire TV device, which is why Amazon is not acting anticompetitively here. Google is. They are leveraging their OS monopoly to force Amazon to do their will, exactly like the Microsoft of old.
That anyone can root for Google here shows how brainwashed people are, due to their overbearing influence on the market. That Slashdotters will do it just makes me sad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"