Slashdot Mirror
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.
Just do it.
I got my own domain name, and signed up with a local hosting/email provider. 5GB space, unlimited traffic, unlimited inboxes, CalDAV/CardDAV sync, calendar, full CPanel environment, automatic SSL/TLS, less than ~$2,50/month.
All of my email and scheduling is now gone from Google, I've moved the stuff on my Google Drive to Dropbox. and I'm working on moving away from Google Photos.
Google Play Music is probably going to be the last holdout, there simply aren't any good alternatives for an online music locker. In the end, maybe I'll end up keeping it locally on my phone instead. Almost everything is on Spotify, so it's only really ~1,500 songs from various indie artists and such. With Opus at 96kbps, they won't take up that much space.
Eat the rich.
US corporations and laws are going wild-west version of capitalism obviously. Hopefully EU will explain Google this is not way to go. If they can go away with this, things will only get worse.
839*929
In the same sense a person being robbed isn't hurt unless they get physically attacked.
You obviously aren't living in the modern world.