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Comment by fra | Hacker News Reader

I'm not quite ready to take out the pitchforks...

> Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chip sets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast.

This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support

> Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open, even if the user's music preference is set to default to another music app, like Pandora.

This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app), and a pretty reasonable ask for any business (don't show competitor's offering when searching within my app).

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> This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app)

No, it's not. Most YouTube users have a different primary music app.

Google is trying to artificially force a marriage of YouTube and YouTube Music because they have utterly failed to do it in the product experience and user base themselves.

If I'm watching a random YouTube video and then want to switch to music, I expect my music app to come up, not YouTube Music.

As a Roku user who thinks Google takes a pretty hostile approach to anyone using their App on Roku, I disagree. If I'm in an App and search, I expect my search to be localized to that App.

That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to me.

I replaced my Roku remote last month because the one I had started having connectivity issues and missing clicks all of the sudden. The first thing I did with the new remote was pop it open and rip the microphone off the PCB with a pair of pliers.

I really don't want an Android TV or Fire TV, and I'm not really keen on Apple TV either but Roku is making it really difficult to stick with them.

It doesn’t matter what the consumer prefers. This battle is about the _ability_ to implement a feature, and that power should reside with the application developer.

Monopolists can often have batter products as well as charging monopolistic pricing.

> and that power should reside with the application developer.

I guess the question is, who is the developer in this case? The Youtube App is running on the Roku Platform accessing the Google Platform. Both Roku and Google are acting in both roles.

The Roku Voice Search is weird, it's surfaced via a button alongside local media controls which are contextual but Roku appears to want their Search to be analogous to Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant as a platform level tool. The volume, and mute keys are the only other buttons that behave at a platform level. The Roku Home button is contextual.

As a user of a STB, if I search (voice or otherwise) I expect it to be contextualized. If I'm in an App then the search should be localized, if I'm at the home screen then I expect it to be global.

My preference with these devices is that instead of "apps" we have "plugins" which add content catalogs. Then playing music or video on the Roku (or any device) is a consistent experience.

> This battle is about the _ability_ to implement a feature, and that power should reside with the application developer.

Which begs the question: who, is _the_ developer? I think the argument can be convincingly made that both Roku and Google are “the” developer. It seems to be the fundamental disagreement underlying every modern accusation of antitrust.

Trying to think of analogies for this “dual developer” framework from the analog world and it’s difficult to come up with one that isn’t in a heavily regulated industry. Airplane & engine manufacturers maybe? Certainly no one would say Rolls Royce is the “manufacturer” of a plane but I would expect they still exercise some degree of control over what plane manufacturers can change and do to the engine. If planes with Rolls Royce engines started falling out of the sky it would be bad for business regardless of whether it was Boeing or Airbus’s doing. But the same can also be said for Boeing and Airbus. Probably more so.

Regardless, I worry the most recent claims of antitrust violation aren’t about consumer protection (as antitrust was intended) so much as they’re about consumer control.

When it comes to the device's global search feature, Roku is the developer, period. Google is only pushing this because they know they have market/end-user leverage, not because it's inherently better for the user. And even if it is, that's for Roku's product managers to decide.

Your airplane engine analogy doesn't really work; Roku doesn't want to modify the YouTube app; this is purely Roku's own global search feature. Yes, it will aggregate results from the YT app, but Roku doesn't want to modify that data source. Further, the Rolls->Boeing/Airbus relationship is more like a vendor->purchaser arrangement, which is nothing like the Roku->Google relationship here.

The behaviour I expect is that the voice search is global except when I specifically go to the search screen of the app. That’s how it works on Apple TV and that’s what is intuitive to me.

That's a reasonable expectation, not having ever used Apple TV though that isn't mine. Having only ever been on the Roku platform, my perception is that it's localized.

As an apple tv user, it has been trained into me that voice commands are Global unless specifically in the search field (not just the search screen). I fuck this up all the time.

What is naturally intuitive to me is to go to an app and anywhere in that app have a voice search specific for that app, as Google is requesting of Roku.

Same here - I had to reread the parent comment because I have a Roku too and that's the behavior so that's what I expect...?

It sounds like Roku is upset that YouTube is asking them to prioritize YouTube results in exactly this case.

I hate the voice search on AppleTV for this very reason. I so wish that voice would just search within the app I am using instead of sending me to the itunes store or somewhere else. Why make me click and swipe extra times to get to the specific app search box...? If I want to search globally, I could just hit the home button and then search!

I purchased a Roku when my previous streaming device died. I specifically chose the Roku model because it did not have a voice remote. I have no brand loyalty but I prefer to buy from a company that does not create their own content and at this point non-features are as important as features.

Yeah companies are all pushing their voice control. I'm never going to talk to a computer until it has full sentience.

I just don't get it. All these big companies pouring oceans of money and research into voice control. What makes this the holy grail of computing? What customer has a burning desire to sit there talking to a computer?

And after all this research, voice control is still primitive and limited, and its capabilities are impossible for a user to discover. If I want to search my E-mail for a message from a colleague about Project Abc, can I do this through voice control, or do I need to type into a search box? I could try voice control, and when it fails because it doesn't know what I want it to do (or it punts me to a generic web search), now I just wasted my time and feel silly for talking to a computer that doesn't understand me.

I'd enjoy a voice control which isn't tied to a device, but more like an Alexa+Siri+Google Now "in a stick with a button to initiate listening and a hardware switch to physically turn the mic off".

One that understands "Google, set a timer for 5 minutes" as well as "Siri, remind me to call X tomorrow" and "Alexa, start Y on the TV in the living room"

> If I'm in an App and search, I expect my search to be localized to that App.

If you're using a fullscreen app on macOS and activate spotlight, do you expect it to only search that app, or do you expect it to behave like Spotlight always behaves and search the entire system?

Put another way, this depends entirely on how the OS and UI is set up.

On Roku if you search in an App it is localized. If you search on the home screen it is not. I expect voice search to behave similarly.

On Roku, voice search (using the voice search button on the remote) is always global. Google wants an exception for youtube. No one else gets this exception.

Regardless of what you think is a better user experience, Roku has made a design decision and are sticking to it and aren't giving Google special treatment, so Google is threatening to take their ball and leave if they don't get what they want.

> If you're using a fullscreen app on macOS and activate spotlight, do you expect it to only search that app, or do you expect it to behave like Spotlight always behaves and search the entire system?

To make another analogy: Maybe Roku should ask Google to make the Chrome address/search bar only show Roku.com results if you’re already on their site.

Joking aside, it might actually be a nice feature if you could use the search bar of your browser to search into the single site specifically, just like you can have different search engines already.

You can do that

Just make it a setting? This seems stupid to debate, let’s allow users to choose.

I agree, it is a simple solution, at least when considering the best user experience- I remember when that was an important thing.

Doesn't the setting exist? Isn't the setting the one to use whatever app has been set as the default music app?

Hot take: the Apple TV is easily the best device of its kind on the market and I’m continually confused at why it doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to the most popular option.

Every other steaming device I’ve ever tried is riddled with ads, dark patterns, and slow slow SLOW performance.

I can understand the aversion to a $200 device just to watch some Internet TV but then I watch people making six figures pretend like a $50 Fire/Roku Stick is the best way to watch movies on their $2,000 LG OLED.

If I were buying a steaming device today I’d probably be evaluating the Apple TV against the Nvidia Shield.

Unless you are fully in the Apple ecosystem already, it's not very welcoming.

Price being one thing but with how Apple recently demonstrated they can just take away all your movies with no recourse, I will pass

1. I assume by “not welcoming” you mean “unable to buy/rent movies from Vudu/Amazon Prime on the box” and that’s a fair criticism. Someone wanting to buy/rent through third party services will find opening a separate browser to be annoying, but that leads me to...

2. iTunes is part of Movies Anywhere just like all its competitors. Being “required” to purchase/rent movies through iTunes isn’t really ecosystem lock-in.

3. “Taking away your movies with no recourse” is not unique to Apple’s iTunes Movies service. This is a standard movie industry practice that can affect you regardless of provider. Using an iTunes competitor does not remove this flaw.

Apple offers a way to back up purchases. They never promised perpetual re-download ability. From their support site: “The only way to back up your purchased media is to download your purchases to your computer.”

I would guess that no other content store can promise anything better than that. Apple didn’t make the rules here, WB/Disney/Universal/Sony did.

Does anyone here happen to know what happens if I get a movie from store X (Apple, Amazon Prime Video, etc) that works with Movies Anywhere, and so that movie shows up in my library at all other Movies Anywhere supported stores that I have accounts on, and then I do something that gets my account with store X banned?

I know I lose access on X, but how about on the other stores?

Also, how the heck does Movies Anywhere actually work? Say I buy a movie on iTunes, but then via Movies Anywhere watch it using the Fandango app on my TV.

Who pays for the bandwidth for that stream? Does Fandango just eat it, or behind the scenes does each company keep track of how much of their bandwidth was used for movies bought at each other company, and they periodically settle up for any imbalances?

> 2. iTunes is part of Movies Anywhere just like all its competitors. Being “required” to purchase/rent movies through iTunes isn’t really ecosystem lock-in.

Movies Anywhere doesn't exist outside of the US fwiw.

Personally I flat out don't trust Apple on content censorship, as I think the Apple TV UI is not very good.

> Unless you are fully in the Apple ecosystem already, it's not very welcoming.

This is an answer to the question I was about to ask. Except for a MacBook Air that I used to run Linux on (but is now gathering dust) and a Mac Mini that I currently run Linux on, I own no Apple devices. I hear great things about the Apple TV, but don't really care to buy into that overall ecosystem to the degree that I assume is necessary to get full use out of the ATV. It's bad enough that Google has its fingerprints on so much of what I have, and I'm actively trying to reduce that, not replace it with another corporate overlord.

Last I used one, the Apple tv remote control sucks in comparison to Roku. No tactile directional buttons, I couldn't get used to the trackpad thing. No mute button. No "lost remote" button on the console to make the remote beep.

Also, I know many will disagree, but...no headphone jack. I don't like bluetooth earphones.

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but Apple just last week updated the remote to address those criticisms. The new remote is compatible with old Apple TV hardware.

There are directional buttons, trackpad swipes, and a classic iPod-like fast forward and rewind touch gesture. Mute button and TV power buttons now included.

$60 remote. You can get a Fire TV with a better remote for less.

The new chromecast is pretty good and $50, and until very recently the ATV was pretty out of date and overpriced. The chromecast stutters sometimes in the main screen, but actually playing videos is just fine.

You can also side load unofficial youtube apps, which are much better than the actual youtube app on the chromecast.

The LG OLED tv os was missing some services, like HBO, but it stutters less.

The only thing missing from all of these devices is a backlit remote. I don't know why they're against the concept.

> The new chromecast is pretty good and $50, and until very recently the ATV was pretty out of date and overpriced. The chromecast stutters sometimes in the main screen, but actually playing videos is just fine.

I can understand "overpriced", but on the other hand, the apparently-not-out-of-date chromecast stutters? WTF.

$50 price point i'm guessing

It's $200. Also the remote sucks, although maybe the new one is decent.

I sold my Apple TV 4K and bought a Fire TV 4K and pocketed the difference. The Fire TV does have slightly more stupid ads on the home screen for shit like McDonald's but the Apple TV would gladly advertise me shit to buy on iTunes. Slightly more relevant ads maybe but still ads. Otherwise it does everything I did with the Apple TV plus works better with my Echos plus has Firefox for watching random vids on the web. Also the Fire TV doesn't suffer from the maddening Netflix bug that made the interface slow to a crawl if browsing for 5 minutes.

AppleTV has never shown me ads so I’m not sure where you saw them?

The new Apple TV just announced has a much better looking remote

The top banner showing you movies to rent, sign up for Apple Music, download this app? It's just advertising.

The new remote looks alright. Knowing Apple it's probably still too thin and easily slipped through couch cushions.

That’s what air tags are for! Shocked they didn’t put that tech into the remote.

I think that must be how you configure it? The too banner does not show that for me - it grabs the shows I e been watching from infuse tv and. Puts them there

Apple TV app banners (ads) are easily adjusted. Just put different apps on the top row. I mostly have folders up there and it rotates through the app banners when you have the folder selected.

> That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to me.

This is kind of thread drift, but I really agree with this. I wish products would stop trying to get me to use some particular feature. First, they cram it onto every screen in the application. Then, they make it easy to accidentally invoke when you didn't want to. Then, they spam you with notifications saying "PLEASE DON'T YOU WANT THIS FEATURE?" Then, they silently enable it and make it opt-out. Product Managers, please just stop this madness. I don't want your feature. I don't care that your bonus is tied to its use. I already bought your product, so you already have my money. But if you keep trying to cram your feature down my throat, I'm not going to buy your company's next product. Give it a rest!

Or whenever you open an application. If I want to check my email, then I want to check my email. I have something in mind, and I am trying to figure out what somebody said to me. That is exactly the wrong time to pop up and ask if I want to learn about a new feature that was just added, because of course I don't. That's something for downtime, not when I'm actively working toward a goal.

I mean, sure, but how is the app to know your intent when you have yet to connect your brain interface device?

Does this happen to you after the first launch of the app after an update? I find it terribly annoying as well. I would rather see a "New Feature Tips" or something similar as an icon notification that I can choose to review or not. The forced balloons stealing focus absolutely needs to die in a fire.

And then they aggressively complain at you, when you turn off their spam notifications for their spam features.

Google itself is the worst offender in this. Turn off the Meet advertisement in Gmail for Android, and they literally pop open a giant comment box saying, "In 1000 words or less, please type in an excuse for why you disabled the giant Google Meet advertisement we plastered all over your Gmail accounts?"

I am genuinely surprised by this.

I love voice search on Roku. Typing things in with a d-pad and on-screen keyboard is horrendous. I think it's very fast, and I like that it shows me all the ways what I'm searching for is available.

It's less about voice search and more about having an always on microphone.

Thats interesting, when i got my first roku with voice control, the remote had the voice control button where the play button used to be so i cut it off the remote with a knife because it was annoying the shit out of me.

It sounds like they have been pushing too hard, but discovery of voice commands is hard. Pushing them is probably useful for some set of customers.

For example, I have an ATV. While watching something you can click the voice button and say something like 'what did he just say' and it will go back 30 seconds or so, turn on captions, replay the bit you missed, then turn captions back off. As a user how would one discover this amazingly useful feature? I didn't even know it existed until I happened to hear about it on a podcast.

A user's manual comes to mind. A website with all of the hidden UX tips/tricks released by the vendor seems only natural. It reminds me of "that" burger joint with its famous unprinted menu. You have to "hear" about it from someone else rather than "we took the time to develop this feature, so here's the details on how to use it" vs "we did this super cool thing for our friends, but you have to be cool to know about it".

Voice search is basically like Apple Spotlight. It's system wide.

I only expect it to be localized within the app I'm in when I'm in the search box for that app, in which case I'm not using voice search, I'm using voice recognition to fill in the contents of the search bar.

Outside the context of voice recognition for an input, to me clicking the voice button on my apple TV is opening Siri, just like "Ok Google" or "Hey Alexa"

>pop it open and rip the microphone off the PCB

In some not too distant Black Mirror future, that would cause the remote to no longer function.

On the one hand, like you I don't really care for voice commands in a remote. In the other, I really liked (and miss now that I have an Amazon firestick device) the built in CEC control of TV volume, and also the headphone jack. I also liked that it had a bit more weight to it. It was easier to find in the covers/sheets of my bed when I would occasionally lose track of it.

The latest Roku remotes have CEC control for power and volume. When my last Roku remote started flaking out, that was what prompted me to upgrade it despite the built in microphone.

Yep, that's the remote I had that I miss. I updated an old Roku I had with that remote (which we bought separately after the dogs chewed the prior remote up) to an Amazon device, and I miss those features.

I generally like the Roku experience better (a friend and I wrote some apps for it in the distant past), but we already had two Amazon sticks in the house, and we happened to go into an Amazon store recently to see what it was like, and the fire stick was cheap enough to be an impulse buy to replace the aging Roku in my bedroom. Not having HBO Max on Roku at the time played into that. I wonder how much that cost Roku.

The harder they push a feature, the more valuable the data they're stealing from you.

Google as an example. They push their "sensor fusion" location service EXTREMELY hard on Android. It will ask you to turn it on every time an app requests location and GPS hasn't locked. It's hard to not turn it on by accident. And once you hit yes, you never see another notification.

Well it turns out this "location service" provides some of the most valuable data Google ever receives. It's tied to their maps live traffic, "how busy is this place" features, location based advertising, wifi based mapping, accuracy of their IP->location maps.

It's creepy data core to their business and if too many people turned it off, it would seriously degrade their mass data collection.

Oh, and it's often given to law enforcement for dubiously legal "area" warrants where they simply say "give me all devices in this radius at this time". Where the radius can be hundreds of meters and the time can be hours.

Have things changed? Last time I checked, on stock Android you couldn't use the GPS without uploading your location to Google, and the whole shebang was wrapped up under the name "location services".

More than anything else, this particular piece of strong-arming makes me completely distrust stock Android handsets. It's shocking to me how casually the boundary of location privacy was violated, and it doesn't inspire confidence in any of the other privacy boundaries.

You can turn off "location services" for local-only GPS fix but it's difficult and hounds you constantly.

After warranty ends I flash Lineage and run location spoofing.

Clearly, users differ on this matter, so vendors should be able to choose their approach and let users vote with their wallets, not have everyone’s hand forced by Google.

That's where the user preference setting comes in.

Users voted with their wallet and bought a Roku, then explicitly defined their preference in the settings.

Google then says fuck you, no.

>If I'm watching a random YouTube video and then want to switch to music, I expect my music app to come up, not YouTube Music.

Umm what? Why is it google's responsibility to ensure their youtube music video is linked to spotify's audio song listing?

> No, it's not. Most YouTube users have a different primary music app.

Exactly. If I setup my music profile to be Spotify, and I have a Spotify premium account, I expect my device to play music on Spotify. Why should it play on Youtube?

So it boils down to the fact that `YouTube Music != YouTube`. In that case you could be right about the user's expectation.

I for one don't use YT Music, but to use YT. Then again I don't use Pandora or Spotify as well, but do listen to music on YouTube (non-music). In my case, I'd expect the search to be executed in the context of YT, but that's what the defaults are there for. I'd choose YT (non-music) as default, if that's possible, or YT Music if i'd care.

Yes, somehow it does make sense that it selects the app which is set as a default, even if I would expect it to perform the query in the opened app.

Can it act upon "Open Song/Performer in Pandora/Spotify"? What's so hard about it? It all doesn't make sense to me.

I'd expect it not to query in YT Music but in the app which is currently open, which is simple YouTube. No, it feels like Google shouldn't have the right to expect YT Music to get launched if it is not set as the default app.

> This is both what many users would expect

If I'm watching a video on youtube and ask to play music, no I do NOT want at all youtube to handle that.

Youtube music is crap. Google has proven many times that they are totally unable to manage music. They should stop to try, because it is utterly embarrassing.

> Youtube music is crap

It's good enough for a lot of people. I pay for YouTube Premium, so I get YouTube music (formerly Google Play Music) included, and it works well enough that I'm not going to pay for a separate music app.

Which is fine, And what user preferences are for.

YouTube Premium is the only reason I stick with YouTube Music. I was a Google Play Music user, and that was fine. Getting both was a boon. I would say though that YouTube Music has been an overall downgrade.

Youtube music was better until several months ago, when they made some changes that ruined it for me. I haven't used Youtube for an extended session of watching music videos since those changes happened. Overall I have watched many fewer music videos since the change. This is on Youtube as implemented on Android TV.

I definitely prefer music videos over plain audio streams.

Then you can make YouTube music your preferred music app in your settings.

Google: Look, you can buy a device with less storage, and store all your MP3s in the cloud!

Me: This sounds terrible… but ok, let’s give it a go.

Google: Now that you have all your music in the cloud, wouldn’t it be nice if you paid us monthly for access to a lot more music?

Me: No.

Google: I see you switched to another app while watching a YouTube video. If you paid us extra, you could keep playing that in the background!

Me: First, why would I ever want that? It’s bad enough YouTube now keeps playing videos in a little thumbnail when I try to exit them. Second, why are you charging a monthly fee for a feature that ought to just come with your app?

Google: Hey, how about a free trial of our subscription service?

Me: No.

Google: Hey, how about we ask you every day if you want a free trial to our subscription service?

Me: Still no.

Google: Ok, I tell you what. How about we shut down Google Play Music, literally the only built in MP3 player, and then if you want to keep listening to music on your phone, you pay us monthly?

Me: Buys an iPhone.

> Me: First, why would I ever want that? It’s bad enough YouTube now keeps playing videos in a little thumbnail when I try to exit them. Second, why are you charging a monthly fee for a feature that ought to just come with your app?

It makes sense - Google can't run YouTube without ads. Ad buyers, which have ads in video form, don't want to run ads when the user isn't looking at the content nor able to easily click on their link to convert them to a paying customer (plus google never gets paid as the user probably won't switch to the app just to click the ad). They either do this or ask advertisers to make ads specifically for audio-only streams (which still makes it hard to drive conversions), but then they'd have to charge advertisers for impressions which Google has very rarely done.

I can listen to YouTube on my PC with the YouTube window in the background. I can listen to YouTube on my phone without looking at my phone. Why would you pay extra to listen to YouTube with your screen off? It might not make sense from YouTube’s business perspective, but sadly that doesn’t mean charging for this “feature” makes sense either.

Doing something that makes sense from a business perspective, even if it doesn’t make sense from the consumer’s perspective, is the entire reason things are done at companies.

Lesson: never store musics to cloud locker unless you accepted locked in.

The VLC app for Android still works though.

I think the message is, if a user clicks the mic button in the YouTube app, does it end up to the YouTube search or the system-wide Roku search? I'm sure Roku is exaggerating by specifically calling it a grab for music listener marketshare.

> This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app), and a pretty reasonable ask for any business (don't show competitor's offering when searching within my app).

Only if I search using the in-app search feature do I expect it to be restricted to only that app.

If I'm watching a YouTube video and ask my device to play music, I expect Spotify to open as that's what I use and pay for.

The platform should prioritize the user, not the app developers.

Not if I have the notion that search from a button on the remote is universal and I want to be taken directly to that content elsewhere. That’d be like suggesting Siri should only fetch content from the active app. It’s a signal for ranking, but not an absolute one.

That's what they are asking! Take it into account while ranking, not remove all other results:

"[...] favor YouTube music results from voice commands made on the Roku remote while the YouTube app is open"

Key word is "favor"

Voice commands aren't going to give you an exhaustive list of possibilities, they're going to play the top result.

Q. "Play Diamonds by Rihanna"

A1. "Playing Diamonds by Rihanna from Youtube Music"

A2. "Playing Diamonds by Rihanna from Spotify"

Either A1 or A2 will happen, but not both. There can be only one.

You don’t always need to have a verb. The way I use my Apple TV is usually to just say the name of the content because I want to pick where it comes from.

But even if you say play, it could still ask you where from and/or confirm it got the right thing. Roku != Amazon Echo.

If I'm asking it to play music, favouring YouTube music means playing it from there

Agree on the second one, but why tf should Google force them to support vp9? If they want to save some money there to stay competitive it's none of Google's business.

Doesn't it cost Google more in either bandwidth or patent fees if they don't support VP9?

maybe. and that's Gs problem that they are trying to make Rs problem.

Not illegal unless it is monopoly abuse somehow.

Well it is monopoly abuse.

How? They have bargaining power with a monopoly share. But it really saves bandwidth and avoids patent fees to unrelated companies. What part is the abuse? Should they have to support mpeg1 too if someone wants to use an old chip at enormous bandwidth costs?

If it is about their DRM and not their freely licensed VP9 then I could see where it get into abuse if competitors can't use it. And I see where standing up the music service using youtube and messing up the system voice search is abusive.

YouTube music is a different product from YouTube itself.

If I said "search wikipedia for thing"

I'd expect to get wikipedia results back, not YouTube videos about wikipedia and thing

> YouTube music is a different product from YouTube itself.

Sorta not really. On Roku, Google is deprecating all of the other means of playing content (e.g. Google Play Video) and funneling everyone to the Youtube App now for everything.

>This is both what many users would expect

So if your default search engine in firefox is duckduckgo, but you're currently on google.com/maps reading reviews of a car service, firefox should use google for your next search request?

This is a bad comparison. There's only ever one voice search button on the remote, but there are multiple easy-to-click search bars when you're viewing maps.

IMO, even if I had Spotify on a Roku, I would be fine with this change. It's not difficult at all to press the home button and then the search button to signal you want to search outside of YouTube. A big chunk of YouTube's utility is that it has music videos.

Shouldn't it be up to Roku, not Google, to decide how their product experience works?

LGs TVs have a prominent omni search button. If you’re in the YT app and use the omnisearch it searches across all content services you have connected. It’s an amazingly useful feature and makes the TV experience actually feel integrated. First time I’ve been happy with a “smart” TV experience.

I’d say it’s a fair comparison.

It would be up to Roku if Roku were willing to support Google with resources for developing their YT/YT TV apps.

They literally have no power beyond acting as a gatekeeper for their users. Their omnisearch (which was awful, at least the last time I used it) is a major part of their strategy to try and guide users towards content they profit from.

Given that it's Google's job to guard the UX of their Roku apps, I think it's 100% reasonable for them to tell Roku to add HW support for new features and not gimp search inside the YT app.

> not gimp search inside the YT app.

I could see this argument if a search for music would lead to a search for (say) a music video. But the idea, as I understand it, is that a request for music to be played would instead be routed through YouTube Music. Even if I'm in the YouTube app, I'm not going to want my music search to go through YouTube Music -- I'm not a subscriber.

I'm not sure exactly what qualifies a music search as a music search and not a search for a music video. The entire point of YT Music on a smart TV is that it's virtually indistinguishable from the default YT app.

it's more like asking "if I press ctrl+L in google.com/maps, should it focus the browser's search or the app's search" - in which applications currently can override ctrl+L to focus their own search bar.

> favor Youtube music results

> user preference set to another music app.

Entirely irrelevant.

Youtube Music is not Youtube. Its a rebranded music streaming service build to compete with Spotify and apple after the failure of google play.

Also is the Roku's device search. Which mean it can functionally search anywhere which is the entire point.

> This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support

Almost definitely what they want but that isn't benign. There's very little user benefit here (lower bandwidth costs IF you're on a metered connection which is a tiny % of people) and lots of benefit to google/youtube (lower bandwidth!) and lots of extra cost to roku (these chips will cost more, at least in the short term). So google is basically forcing Roku to spend money to save google money.

That said, VP9 isn't just a good idea for Google. It's a good idea for everyone doing video delivery. Google and everyone else shouldn't be strong-arming Roku into deploying VP9-capable hardware they should be finding ways to help. Buy a billion dollars worth of VP9-capable chips for the next Chromecast on the condition that they cost no more than 10% more than H264-chips and the manufacturer agrees to sell to anyone at that price... or... something.

Even if it is what most users would expect (I don't agree it is), that is a product decision that should be entirely under Roku's control. Google's threat to pull YouTube from their device is an anti-competitive move.

If customers do want either behavior, they should be advocating to Roku for it. Google has no place setting a requirement here.

> if I have an app open, voice search works within that app

This is not how Siri or the Google Assistant works on iOS, Android, or Apple TV.

Roku does not support multitasking. I would not expect a voice search to close the app I'm using. If I want to switch apps to listen to music, I could hit the home button, then voice search and let music preferences launch the appropriate app.

Google Assistant on my Pixel 4 will search in foreground app if I ask a query so you might not be correct in that respect.

This is how Google Assistant works on Android TV

> This is both what many users would expect

Not when it’s not the current behavior, nor behavior present in any other application.

It's good to see such optimism. But it's not necessarily true, see for example the Apple MFi program that requires custom chips provided only by Apple as way to tax & lock devices. In the TV/broadcast business Roku is in, it is unfortunately pretty common for content providers to mandate DRM X or Y, which is embedded deep into the main SoC, so you'd have only one or two possible sources.

I don't understand why Google, who is apparently competing with Roku with Chromecast, would try to "help" Roku fix a worse user experience? My Spidey sense tells me there's more to it than just trying to fix the Roku UX.

I agree, it does seem to make sense... and this isn't just with YT, it also affects YT TV. On my Smart TV, with a Roku remote, I don't want to switch out of the current app (YTTV in my case).

I'll take your pitchfork and brandish it at least ...

>>This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support

Shouldn't we expect reasonable backward-compatibility?

Your second point seems valid.

To be honest though ... youtube is the weak link in most of my set ups. Can't access ad-based youtube via Sonos (and no, I won't pay for premium because of how I feel about Google right now), scrapes here with Roku, etc.

Google is slowly becoming obsolete in my house.

n=1

If they're talking YouTube TV specifically (the terminology doesn't make much distinction between YouTube and YTTV, although the headline makes it seem like 'YouTube' always means YTTV in this case) they also might be requiring a new DRM chip for level 1 widevine.

No. If I'm in YouTube I want Tidal to play music, not their janky YTM setup that can't give me quality audio even if I pick the video myself. At least make it a toggle for users to manage themselves vs hard coding it into the app.

Agreed. If I am within the YouTube app, I am expecting search results from YouTube. Showing search results from Pandora is just tainting those result.

If I want or search across all apps, I should be able to go to the Roku home screen and search there .

I understand your position on this. But what I don't understand is what makes Google think it has the right to demand anything from another company.

> a pretty reasonable ask for any business

seems abusive coming from someone with an extremely dominant market position in one area.

I doubt users expect that. Voice assistant search on every device/platform today is always global.

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