Google and Amazon are punishing their own customers in a bitter feud

&gt; Amazon has just responded to Google’s decision to remove YouTube from all Fire TV products<p>I&#x27;m sorry - is amazon prime video available on my chromecast now and I&#x27;ve missed it?<p>These guys are bloody hypocrites.<p>(edit: meant to say &#x27;prime video&#x27; on chromecast, previously it just said prime)

I&#x27;d been debating which one to get, Amazon stick or Chromecast. This settles the debate. I&#x27;ll download and watch, as before.

Is this going to trouble Google’s antitrust problems in Europe? “You better carry nest or we pull YouTube.” Seems kind of similar to Microsoft’s 90s era “You better only carry IE or we cut you off or charge you a lot more.”

I think these are different issues over different products.<p>Google should take the high road and keep YouTube available as broadly as possible. YouTube shouldn’t care about Nest product availability.<p>This would be similar to CBS blocking Wal-Mart mentioned in shoes because they wouldn’t sell Westibghouse TVs.<p>The reprisals aren’t similar.<p>The scary bit is that it reenforces that Google doesn’t view the internet as open. Could you imagine YouTube blocking the Opera Browser? They shouldn’t try to bundle services unnaturally.

In other words, Amazon is about to start selling thermotasts.

This is the kind of thing that regulators need to crack down on ASAP. This balkanization of the Internet is terrible for consumers.

this kind of shit is why i just download all of my media. music, tv shows, movies, they’re all easy to download and then i can play the back on whatever device i please with no restrictions

This kind of behavior is why I recently steered a friend to a Roku. With any of the streaming devices (Amazon, Google, Apple) you risk losing out due to dueling between the major tech companies.. The major players tend to leave Roku alone since it&#x27;s a 3rd party service that doesn&#x27;t compete with them.<p>So I&#x27;m throwing my bet towards Roku since it&#x27;s the only device that can survive a pissing match between all the tech companies.

Is this also why Amazon refuses to sell the Google Home?

I know this is probably more of a shared bad behavior situation, it really frustrates me as Google did more or less the same thing against Microsoft. Dunno, feels like if they could silo their services away from every other platform at this point without hurting themselves, they would.

The YouTube block is surprising at all. Google did the same thing with Windows Phone.

While this is framed as a feud, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s actually the case.<p>Nest products have had a lot of public criticism, and I suspect amazons internal numbers might show high return rates and high levels of user fraud.<p>It could also be that amazon wanted a higher margin on the devices than Google was happy to give.