Google pulls YouTube off the Amazon Echo Show
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[1] Promoting Amazon products while searching for "Google Home": https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2/135-4089858-540885...
[2] Not selling chromecast because it doesn't support Amazon video, which they themselves won't make available on chromecase
• I want to pay a flat fee for access (Netflix), not pay-per-view PLUS subscription fee (amazon prime video).
This seems like a strange position to have. I agree Amazon's behavior in pulling the Chromecast from their store as a means to push their own stuff is unacceptable, but Prime has plenty of content that can be viewed for 'free' (beyond the cost of Prime). Having additional paid content seems entirely reasonable.
In any case, what you are getting in the end is the equivalent of Netflix plus more options, which I'm not sure why it would be considered a bad thing. Just ignore the pay offerings, and brows the free movie section, and you have what you want.
Since you haven't found anything interesting on prime to watch, I'll give you a couple suggestions for prime original series which I found good (or have on good authority are worthy):
Goliath - This was excellent from start to finish. It's only 8 episodes, so easy to consume.
The Man in the High Castle - Interesting to me in how the geopolitics of two superpowers in the 60's play out when those superpowers are Nazi Germany and Militaristic Japan, and the parallels to the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the same period. A little bit of mostly unexplained and low-key science fiction in-story to drive it keeps it interesting as well.
Red Oaks - Only caught one episode, but my wife has seen it all and thought it was fairly funny and it seemed interesting in an 80's John Hughes sort of way.
The Prime Video product is functionally equivalent to Netflix. The PPV videos are an additional service that Amazon offers that Netflix does not offer.
The confusion that seems to be bothering you is easily resolved. Here you can browse only videos that are free with subscription: https://www.amazon.com/Prime-Video/b?node=2676882011
Most Amazon Prime apps I've seen make a clear distinction between the two.
The ones on my Roku and Blu-ray player don't do it as distinctly as I'd like, and don't have an option to permanently ignore the PPV offerings. They're just highly-targeted ads that I'd really like to block, but can't.
I find it annoying that I can't permanently hide the pay items. If I could, I'd completely hide them from the browsing UI, but make them show up with some kind of distinctive icon when they match a search that I make. If I want it that badly, I'll go shopping for the DVD/Blu-ray.
I'm never going to actually pay for an individual digital video, so it's grating to have them presented as equal candidates for viewing alongside all the "included with Prime" content.
Google is way too nice for amazon
Was Google wrong for forking WebKit?
While they are required by the license to opensource their code, this is perhaps the most user unfriendly method ( multiple builds per version per device, no code history, ... - it's a mess)
Here is Chromium as you requested:
Here's the source code: https://cs.chromium.org/chromium/?sq Here's the git: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git
Amazon will only sell the Chromecast if Google allows them to cast to the Chromecast from all of their apps — even on Kindle devices.
Google refuses to allow that, and also refuses to allow Amazon to build their own implementation of the Chromecast library (the Google-supplied one requires Play Services).
The options for Amazon are: remove all Amazon apps from the Kindle, install only Google apps by default, and provide Chromecasting support, or only provide Chromecast supports for users of Google Android, but not those on the Kindle.
This is a clear case of Google abusing its monopoly on Android, and Amazon responding by abusing its monopoly in online retail.
EDIT: This is exactly why I don't use any proprietary IoT devices, but only open products, or things I built myself. Open standards circumvent these entire issues.
Amazon is the one voluntarily choosing not to support chromecast.
As result, it does not work on the Kindle devices.
Amazon would have to install Play Services (compliance with this would require setting Google as the default for all stores, apps, etc, and even removing a few of Amazon's own apps), or Amazon could enable Chromecast for everyone except Kindle users (which would convince people to buy less Kindles)
So when Google is asking Amazon to either destroy its own product, or make its own product work better with a competitors devices than with its own, then obviously Amazon won't do either of these things.
Both the web and mobile apps of Amazon prime can support chromecast streaming, but they made the decision not to - before the play services requirement for Android.
Amazon is not going to provide better functionality on Google Android than on Amazon Kindle Android. That'd cannibalize their own product.
If you want Chromecast support on Android, then ask Google to make it independent of Play Services.
The web SDK also doesn't require play services, which is why, when combined with the fact Amazon did not say play services is the reason they don't support chromecast, it's a red herring to be focused on devices and play services.
Amazon made the decision to force users to use their own proprietary streaming service, and then dropped competing streaming devices from their store.
Or maybe they don’t want to deliver functionality only to some users, which would lead to confusion and frustration?
Have you read the threads whenever Google launches a product and only 2% of users have access? Maybe they don’t want such a shitstorm to destroy their business-customer relationship?
What's more likely here - That Amazon was worried about customer relationships specifically with the companies Apple & Google, or that Amazon wanted to block competition from it's store to force users to buy Amazon's streaming products?
This is also a far cry from your original assertion that Google was blocking Amazon from developing on chromecast. You seem like you have an axe to grind here - why is that?
I bought a Chromecast. Two actually. I refuse to use Google Play Services.
And guess what happened when Google made Chromecast require Google Play Services? I could throw 70€ away, because they had become useless.
So I used open source reimplementations and made my own apps, but guess what? Google decided to obfuscate the protocol and change it every week to prevent that.
Yep, and if I'm not mistaken, Chromecast initially didn't have the Play Services requirement(I seem to recall Netflix on the Kindle working at first). So definitely not all openness and friendliness from the Google side.
It's ridiculous how many people here are defending Google over this.
I'm not aware of any Google Play Services installed on my iPhone, and if it's something that's bundled with the apps, then Amazon Prime Video can bundle it as well.
The situation on Android might be different; at one point I certainly could cast from Netflix to Chromecast on my Kindle Fire (even though no Google Play Services existed) although from looking around on Google a bit that appears to no longer be the case.
Correct. Google removed that ability, and Amazon won’t support Chromecast until Google adds it back.
Which is why we need some "net neutrality" kind of regulations as alluded to in another comment on this topic.
In that update, they reformulated their Terms of Service and instead published a series of documents focusing on various topics that third-party developers must uphold to be able to serve as a YouTube client. This means that, as an easy example, clients which omit Google's ads [5] are running afoul of these policies.
That being said, as with most ToS, YouTube reserves the right to terminate access to its API Services at any time [4].
[1] https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/required-minimum... [2] https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/revision-history [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12409825 [4] https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/api-services-ter... [5] https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/developer-polici...
The reason was that the only official way Google allowed for non iOS/Android clients was if they used the HTMl API. Microsoft decided they wanted native performance so they wrote their own client to YouTube instead of using the HTML API. Microsoft's YouTube didn't play advertisements, which obviously Google wasn't ok with. So after some back and forth Google just said "No".
I think Amazon probably made a similar mistake here.
That's not enough to satisfy Google. Not at all. They have far-reaching rules about what you do with the HTML.
Author wrote:
>, I’d guess Google very much wants features that it thinks are essential for YouTube’s future growth included, stuff like subscriptions, next video recommendations, autoplay, and so on.
And similar excerpt from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/27/google-pulls-youtube-from-am...:
>The Echo Show had displayed YouTube videos without integral features, from video recommendations to channel subscriptions.
For more context, the importance of the above "recommendation" features to Google in The Atlantic article and related HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14910125
Of course, there's the side issue of having an always-on voice-controlled computer hooked up to my LAN, but that's a different rant.
The reality of the situation is that many things these days are fundamentally services instead of objects, and services are subjects to Terms of Service, and can often morph into something else or entirely disappear subject to the provider's strategies or whims. Internet-enabled devices merely enable this business model, which can be advantageous (e.g. it's really hard to consume live content without some kind of live content delivery; or, stuff I upload into a particular cloud is stored durably and resiliently with nice uptime SLAs and I can frequently access it from other devices; or, this device actually gets security updates instead of running an ancient 5-year-old kernel vulnerability), but also detrimental to the end-user (e.g. sometimes stuff disappears from Netflix and never comes back; online services that get shut down; DRM services that get shut down such that playback rights can no longer be renewed, etc).
It seems to me that in your comment, Internet-enabled things are standing in for 'captive devices'. A Fire Stick, a Google Home, an Apple TV are tiny outposts of their host companies inside your house, connected through your LAN to their HQ. They're not actually yours in any meaningful sense. You can use them if you wish to take advantage of the services they provide, but those services are ephemeral and may be radically altered or entirely go away at any time, and the giant wall of text that we all click through warns us of that, even if we shrug and use it anyway because it gates features we really want.
If I watch TV on my laptop, I don't have to worry about sticks and compatibility.
If I get my cooking videos on my laptop, I don't have to worry about compatibility.
If I listen to my audio on my laptop I don't have to worry about compatibility.
Also, your laptop is still a device. It just so happens to be more compatible. Google could just as easily pull support for your laptop. It's highly unlikely for YouTube, but not for other services.
Whether you like it or not, if you consume media that you didn't create, this affects you.
That, in a nutshell, is the heart of the problem, and it has only become worse as walled gardens proliferate.
Some? You mean, "All Certified Android users"?
There's what, a billion devices like that?
Remember, Chromecast used to work on Kindle apps until Google banned that.
At the same time, Netflix also stopped supporting Chromecast on many devices, as did many other services. If you always had devices with Google Play Services, you’d never notice, but if you didn’t, it was quite an annoying change.
Tech behemoths should not be allowed to (ab)use their monopolies to lock users inside their walled gardens.
But Google refuses to provide a way for Amazon to support Chromecast from all devices (including Kindles), so Amazon obviously had to make their own solution.
First result is a Fire Stick. "Amazon's Choice" -- okay, that's fair, I guess.
Second result is a Roku Stick. Odd, but at least it's relevant?
Third result thru the rest of the page is a bunch of blatant knockoffs of both styles of Chromecast. That's pretty shitty.
Edit: to clarify, by "shitty" I mean "user hostile". They would rather push me towards a clear knockoff of what I'm searching for instead of the product I'm clearly searching for.
So you can buy used or refurbished phones from some third party retailer, great, but you cannot buy a Pixel or Chromecast or Google Home.
Also, is it Google preventing Amazon from getting Prime onto their devices? I've always been under the impression this was Amazon's choice, as it helps them move more Fire sticks.
New nexus devices are still for sale.
> Also, is it Google preventing Amazon from getting Prime onto their devices? I've always been under the impression this was Amazon's choice, as it helps them move more Fire sticks.
Correct, Google requires Play Services nowadays for Chromecast. Amazon Prime Video and Netflix both used to support Chromecast on Kindle devices and elsewhere, Google disabled that functionality, and Amazon removed it elsewhere. Fire sticks are sold at a loss.
How does that explain ChromeCast support for third party IOS apps?
Amazon can’t exactly use this on their Kindle devices.
There was nothing stopping Amazon from writing an app for the AppleTV 4 or for that matter working with Apple to make one for AppleTV 3
This issue is the subject of the EU's next antitrust case expected to be settled this year.
Amazon then in return chose to not sell Google products which were intentionally blocked from supporting Kindle products, which is why they won't sell the Chromecast, for instance.
I do not think a company should be forced to preinstall a competitor's app. Imagine your Google Pixel being required to have the Windows Store installed. Wouldn't that be irritating?
What's even funnier, all the restrictions to Android recently aimed at solving battery life.. guess who the worst offender is: Google Play Services. Guess who's excluded from all the anti-competitive restrictions Google is sliding into Android: Google Play Services.
(Now to be fair you could also vendor your own framework services/components/whatever and delivery them with your build of Android, but Google certainly has the upper hand in that in order to be licensed to use googles framework services and thus their apps, you have to pass a set of compliance tests, among other things.)
Do you have a source for that? Because I'm pretty sure that's false. In fact, the Android 8.0 changelog even [explicitly says][1] that Play Services is affected by the new background location limitations:
> This behavior change affects all apps that receive location updates, including Google Play services.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8....
But it's good to see Google closing that gap because it's one of the ways naughty apps would piss in the pool for everyone else. And it's one of the criticisms a lot of people had against Google's upper hand.
That's not an arbitrary exception on Google's part though; the reason it's excluded is because Play Services targets Marshmallow, not Oreo, and the new background execution restrictions are currently only enforced for apps targeting Oreo (though there's a switch in settings to manually enforce them for individual apps, and you can flip that switch for Play Services if you want).
I'm looking at my battery stats and with 10% battery remaining, Google services has used 4% of the battery. So you're either being disingenuous or you have an issue with your device.
This is simply incorrect. You put out some facts about licensing Google apps but you apply this completely subjective line in front of it which makes it sound like Google actively did something. These licensing terms have been around for years and every company you can think of has agreed to the terms. They aren't that onerous.
This whole mess is entirely in Amazon's court. They made all of the decisions and made all of the moves. It's their call to do everything themselves and want to own every piece of the system. They weren't forced to. They want to.
Yes they are. Installing 20 google apps and placing them extremely prominently, forced google widgets, google has to be the only search, the only voice...
Google is putting these very strict rules on anyone that wants to use the play store, and being actively misleading about it because "android" is still "open".
If they want the benefits of being "open" then they should walk the walk and let all android devices use these free android apps.
Personally, I have no issue with Google's licensing. Why shouldn't they be able to ship their software how they want? At the end of the day most users don't care. I love FOSS when it comes to my own development and I couldn't imagine being a developer without access to so many FOSS libraries. However, I don't give a crap if my phone is fully open source and neither do vast majority of the other billion+ Android users
OK you clearly haven't read the licensing terms since most of this is bullshit.
The preinstalled apps don't have to be "extremely prominently" placed, and there is no forced google as the only voice.
Most of this you could trivially find out by just picking up a Samsung S8 which its own voice search (Bixby), and a home screen where the only Google app is Play Store. Even still they can (and do) then shove the other Google apps into its own Google folder in the app launcher.
The only three voice features I use are:
- Set the timer to 10 minutes (mostly pasta)
- Wake me in 1 hour (for a nap)
- How is the weather today?
That's it and and I don't have a home which is connected to my phone like most out there.
I think voice control only makes sense for commands where you don't need further interactions with the system, like watching a result on a screen or when driving a car. Then it's ok, otherwise I can't imagine any voice driven killer app.
If YT wasn't the only silo with our videos, then Google wouldn't be able to play this trick.
Google search has competitors too, none that are large or threatening enough to influence Google's product behavior around search. That's the key when it comes to competition. If a competitor is so small you can safely ignore them, they're a competitor in name only.
The only potential threat to YouTube in the near-term, is Facebook's watch product.
Unfortunately, simply cloning youtube isn't a competitor without also cloning youtube's bankroll. For a very good explanation of why, see Folding Ideas video essay "VidMe or Why Platforms Aren't Your Friends"[1].
Does anyone know what specific terms Amazon is allegedly violating?
Email Communications from Google: https://imgur.com/15gaOf6 HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9873255
I wish this extension existed still when I can legally not watch a video with Youtube RED.
They weren't alone in these regards, but they took it to new levels and QA was seemingly nonexistent. IIRC, even Opera went so far as to have an email client and newsgroups reader included.
Netscape had both the email client and newsgroup reader, it also had a web authoring tool, conferencing software, Netcaster (which I never did figure out what it did), and a calendar. Heck, I think it even had other feature... It had all of those in what was theoretically a browser at a time when computers typically had RAM with double digit values in MB.
Microsoft certainly didn't help, but I'm not sure that they really destroyed it.
I never did figure out what Communicator actually was meant to do. Someone likened it to ActiveScript (I think that's what it was called, IE's proprietary scripting stuff that required hosting on Windows).
I was largely an Opera user back then. I still am, but that leads to a long off-topic conversation.
If you give me a shitty experience because you want to dominate the world, well too bad, I'm opting out. I couldn't care less who's fault it is, I am the customer, I am right, and if you want to earn my money it's your duty to deliver me a great experience.
However, your sentiment is correct since it is a two-way street. You don't owe them your time or money when they make stupid decisions. You just cut ties with them and they lose out.
fuck these devices. I'm not paying for less freedom.
Thanks to walled gardens, we're now pretty much stuck in a shitty situation noone else can fix.
The other is a store that has lots and lots of competition.
Edit: revenue is not profit!
AWS revenues (minor) vs Store revenues (major) .
I'm not trying to defend Amazon or anything, but you really are comparing very different situations.
YouTube costs: $6.3 billion per year
YouTube revenue: $4 billion
So they are losing $2.3 billion per year.
Eli the Computer Guy made a lot of waves around a year ago because his account was both incorrectly flagged for a "Community Strike" and his appeal was incorrectly dismissed which effectively left his channel dead in the water and he announced he was quitting. After outrage, a human finally stepped in and fixed the mess. Then later that year, his account was deleted by Google in the middle of a live stream without any explanation. (It was later restored, without explanation.)
Eli, talking as business entrepreneur, has talked a lot about the problems of YouTube as a platform. He frequently does business analysis and goes over numbers.
He has also broken down their cost structure, and yes, their expenses can really be that high. In addition to the massive number of videos that get uploaded every minute, they must also make multiple encodings of each one, and then all that needs to be mirrored to all the CDNs. (He was trying to figure out if he could do self-hosting...he felt if he just needed to make downloadable video files you watch offline, it can be done cheaply, but for streaming convenience, that's where things get expensive.)
Eli also quoted Susan Wojcicki stating that they still see YouTube as in the investment stage, which means they still are pumping money into it with no expectation that it's going to turn a profit anytime soon.
And yes - Wojcicki did say they are still investing in YouTube. Specifically she was talking about adding VR functionality.
YouTube is probably profitable.
Some random examples:
CBS Marketwatch: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-reasons-youtube-still-doesnt-...
Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/youtube-still-doesnt-make-goo...
Motley Fool: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/01/youtube-is...
And none of these include this year's Adpocolypse.
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google-y...
http://fortune.com/2017/04/27/alphabet-earnings-up-as-ads-su...
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4096345-google-youtubes-pot...
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2017/0129/How-YouTube-and...
https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/youtube-will-earn-9bn...
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-youtube-alphabet...
Even if YouTube isn't profitable today (and I think they are), the growth indicates they will be soon.
> And none of these include this year's Adpocolypse.
That's true. That could be interesting for sure. The Variety link talks about it a little bit.
And Google isn't really a monopoly on internet videos. In addition to many smaller competitors, Facebook and Twitch are competitors. It's hard to find reliable numbers, but from what I've seen YouTube gets around 2/3 or the hours watched in this category (i.e. excluding streaming sites like Netlifx and Prime). That's big, but not monopoly big.
Having the rights to a show is not having a monopoly, as we're talking about them. If not every single cable company in the world is somehow a monopoly.
You can watch other shows.
YouTube has an effective monopoly on internet videos. Almost ALL user generated videos, apart from few niches.
They're using their dominance in one market to try and give themselves an advantage in another, which is usually illegal.
Amazon, on the other hand, have plenty of competition. From Walmart to eBay. In videos there's Hulu and Netflix and Now TV, etc.
Cable companies don't generally produce content. In the case of the ones that do (like Comcast, after their acquisitions), they've absolutely used their content for anti-competitive purposes. This is exactly what Amazon has done with Prime...tried to leverage it to support their less established products. And it's exactly what Google is doing with YouTube. Amazon is getting the same treatment they've given others.
> You can watch other shows.
And you can watch other user-uploaded videos. There's plenty of other sites that host user-generated videos.
> YouTube has an effective monopoly on internet videos. Almost ALL user generated videos, apart from few niches.
This is just incorrect. YouTube is the biggest, but it's nowhere near "almost all" videos. As I said before, the numbers I've seen are around 1/3 of the watched hours are on platforms other than YouTube with Facebook being the biggest.
> Amazon, on the other hand, have plenty of competition. From Walmart to eBay. In videos there's Hulu and Netflix and Now TV, etc.
Hulu and Netflix don't manufacture streaming devices like FireTV. Walmart and eBay don't stream video or sell their own devices. Google and Apple are the only competitors relevant to this discussion since they're the only ones that compete on multiple products. And all three have artificially limited their cloud services to lock consumers into their platforms. All three should be reined in. But acting like Amazon is somehow the helpless victim in all this is just hypocritical. They're getting the same treatment they've given Google and Apple.
I'm not being rude, as I used to misunderstand them too. You need to read more about anti-competitive behaviour and the terms used.
Anti-competitive behaviour has specific meaning and nothing you're talking about meets those criteria, but everything I'm talking about does.
Another theory is it's because Google (same as Apple) takes a share of any purchase you make on their platform.
http://www.androidauthority.com/bezos-sheds-light-amazon-gav... https://lifehacker.com/amazon-banning-the-chromecast-is-unbe...
Amazon chooses not to, and that's their right, but that's not a Google decision. So, it boils down to Amazon refuses to list Chromecast and Google Home (but instead redirects searches to competitors) because Amazon refuses to use Chromecast or run Google Apps.
The EU countries are also much better than the US at punishing companies for abusing personal information.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/25/eu_pegs_homegrown_n...
Is it anti-competitive to say "please show our ads if you want to integrate with our free video service"?
My guess would be it's harder to monitize when they don't have access to all the other stuff they can track in a browser or phone app.
PS: One more reason not to depend on APIs.
Additionally, it's usually pretty easy to find copyrighted content on there
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