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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

This is one reason why the Roku is such a great streaming platform, they're neutral.

You can receive VUDU (Walmart), Prime Video (Amazon), and YouTube/Play Movies (Google). The only thing you cannot receive is Apple's ecosystem (but no non-Apple streaming hardware can as far as I know). Same reason why Spotify is so prevalent, they too are neutral in this war between titans.

I have no sympathy for Google or Amazon in this particular situation since both have a track record of blocking out competition when they can. I do have sympathy for customers who get caught in the middle of these little disputes.

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I may be wrong but Google can block itself from being shown on Roku right? It seems weird to call Roku neutral when it's not them but Google calling the shots.

I think the ideas is that Google has less of a reason to block Youtube on the Roku because they don't compete in any meaningful way.

Google can block YouTube wherever it wishes because their YouTube clients are either:

- first-party, so they make them on platforms where they wish to be present on, and conversely withdraw from platforms on which they no longer wish to be present; or,

- third-party, such they are bound by the YouTube API Services Terms of Service [1], which reserves their right to terminate any client for specifically enumerated reasons, or any or no reason at all.

[1] https://developers.google.com/youtube/terms/api-services-ter...

There are clients like Newpipe[1] that directly parse the Youtube website instead of using the API.

[1]: https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/

I'm a big user of NewPipe. They have features for free that the YouTube app would make you pay for, such as listening to audio only in the background, removing ads. Plus many other useful features such as having a scaled down video display in front of other apps and downloading video/audio to listen later offline.

fun fact Roku was spun out of netflix just so they could remain neutral https://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs-project-...

Google had all unofficial YouTube apps removed from the Roku Channel Store. It wasn't until the Roku 3 if my memory serves me right that they had an official one made.

With YouTube TV and Prime Video coming to the Apple TV, it actually will be the one device that has everything.

Until it isn't of course. It is challenging to understand how greedy these people are such that they really want both all the data (viewing habits, demographics, etc) and all the revenue.

Prime Video has been struggling so Amazon can't afford the strategy tax of limiting it to their own devices [1]. The more Apple TVs that are sold by Apple, the more untenable their position becomes, especially when Netflix will be on any device. Amazon vs Google might be turning into a hot war (which makes sense since they're competing in an increasing number of businesses), but that's not the case with Apple.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-amazon-is-failing-to-domi...

Amazon just pulled Twitch from Roku

Oh my God, how very crappy of Amazon to do this?

It's unfortunate but the app has some real issues. It tends to crash people's Roku or lag the devices to the point of being unresponsive to input. There's a Twitch channel for Plex you can use with the Plex app, but it has audio sync issues, most noticeably with 1080p @ 60fps

They had obviously stopped working on it a while ago but I can't be the only one who regularly uses it to watch streams.

Exactly right. I bought a roku last week for this reason. I support vendors that believe in openness and inclusion.

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