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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

Why does Roku even need to work with YouTube to put YouTube on the device? It's a web page that can be opened in any browser.

For that reason, I have to assume that Roku wants to extract money from Google here, and as with net neutrality, they're right to not pay.

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It’s better used as an app on these devices. A webpage would be very cumbersome to use with a basic remote and lower powered processor. I also assume they integrated into search and other roku functionality.

Could Roku start distributing New Pipe[0] or similar? It works ok-ish on my android TVs.

[0]https://newpipe.net/

Google would probably find ways to obstruct any of Roku's alternative YouTube clients, just as Google disabled Microsoft's YouTube client on Windows Phone years ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/appsblog/2013/aug/15/...

Your personal account can get suspended for abusing the service, like when sidestepping their official apps to download videos.

You'd think that, but YT engineers solved this challenge using two methods:

1. Build an efficient "browser" (HTML5 runtime) that can run a web app.

2. Write a webapp specifically targeted towards TVs, includes 10 foot interface, etc.

Source: https://cobalt.dev/

Amazon for years just had an app in their store called "YouTube.com" which opened YouTube.com/tv in a webview. Worked absolutely fine, and was the preferred method until Google finally let them have an apk that didn't rely on Play Services.

I mean, the fact it was the preferred method until an app came along does rather show that it wasn't actually very good.

YouTube makes ad revenue from Roku users, Roku wants a cut.

That’s so f’ing messed up. I paid extra for Roku because I thought they made their money by selling me a product that I own as opposed to one that owns me.

Brigading much?

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