Agreed this absolutely sucks.
Amazon fired the first shots tho. This is their fault and they should put Google products back up on their store.
Amazon fired the first shots tho. This is their fault and they should put Google products back up on their store.
A retailer chooses not to stock a product-their prerogative perhaps? There are plenty of places to buy a Chromecast.
A content provider withdraws access to it's service from consumers who have certain devices. This hurts consumers more than it does Amazon, perhaps?
In my view this is two companies demonstrating how they have become dangerous monopolies. Amazon has such a dominant online position that it is able to give its own product an unfair advantage merely by not selling the competition. I think the idea that you can be a manufacturer, and a retailer and own the marketplace (along with being the biggest hosting provider) as completely untenable long term.
Google on the other hand has put itself in the equivalent position of a TV station that blocks viewing from certain devices. Then add that you manufacture some of those devices? I hope the backlash from YouTube advertisers is colossal.
The individual action of Amazon vs Google here is kind of pathetic and I think Google come out looking worse. The real issue is the market dominance of these two companies. Time for a carve up
Because Google refused to allow Amazon to cast to Chromecasts.
There was once a time when the Amazon Video and Netflix apps on Amazon Kindle Fire could stream to Chromecast, Google then changed their protocol to prevent that (you now need to use their proprietary library for it).
Amazon reacted by removing the Chromecast from their store.
That’s a funny claim, considering Google intentionally has changed the protocol several times, to prevent any third party implementation of the protocol – including Amazons, and many Open Source libraries for it.
I was building an open source library for it when these changes happened, and I can tell you, it’s not pretty.
The only way to actually reliably stream to Chromecast, and to receive Chromecast streams, is with Google’s proprietary library for it. On Android, this is included in the Google Play Services.
Obviously, on Amazon Kindles, these aren’t preinstalled (due to their restrictive terms), so Amazon had their own implementation (which, as mentioned, Google acted against)
Google Cast players can't stream Amazon content because Amazon hasn't implemented the Cast SDK in their app.
Amazon doesn't implement the Cast SDK because their flavor of Android eschews Google Play Services which is required for the Cast SDK on Android.
Google doesn't license the Google Play Services to Amazon because....
We can go around for a while...