Hacker News Reader

Comment by humanistbot | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

> The fight between the two companies centers on a 2019 agreement to allow YouTube TV on Roku. Roku said Google demanded special access to search data from Roku customers as a condition of allowing YouTube TV on Roku devices. Roku also said Google asked for prioritized search results for YouTube videos in Roku's search feature.

> Roku said it agreed to those terms, but also asked that Google not ask for any additional data. Google would not commit to that, according to Roku, and now both sides are at an impasse. Unless both companies come to an agreement before Dec. 9, YouTube's apps will disappear from Roku's app store.

View on HN

If that's all it is, it's pretty damning of Google.

It'd be nice if they thought of the users they'd be affecting, but I guess in a way they are, in that they're upset they can't mine those users.

Google denies that they made this request, but recently revealed emails indicate that they did make a request along those lines.

Regardless of this deal, Roku is almost certainly dead in the water. They have limited international penetration and their platform, if you can call it one, is extremely limited compared to Apple, Google, and even Amazon’s offerings and app stores.

I don’t see a path forward at this point for the company. They will continue to have a stream of ad revenue for awhile, but will slowly get squeezed out.

They seem to be doing well in North America: https://9to5google.com/2021/05/03/roku-global-streaming-mark...

They have limited international penetration and their platform

Most cheap smart tvs come with roku OS. I wouldn't call that limited penetration.

Most cheap smart TVs in North America.

also Latin America, where their value offer is strong

Roku is a meta-platform that includes Apple and Amazon and may even be taking a 30% cut of those.

I don't see any evidence that Roku is taking 30% of anything. Roku does not require users to use its own payment system for subscriptions of streaming services, including subscriptions initiated from within the channel.

Roku help page for Apple TV channel: https://support.roku.com/article/360036652634

> If you subscribe to any Apple TV Channels, payment will be charged to your Apple ID account at purchase.

Apple TV channel listing on Roku: https://channelstore.roku.com/details/a20e3c294993147c6cda43...

You pay Apple then Apple pays Roku.

"brand-specific buttons on its remote controls... $1 per customer for each button ... Roku doesn’t pay anything to the channels it distributes, yet it still takes a share of their ad revenue. ... Roku executives will threaten to cancel a channel if its owner doesn’t give Roku a larger cut of ad sales" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/streaming...

Do you work for Google, Apple or Amazon?

Both sides of the agreement are likely being deceptive in their statements. Google says they never asked for preferential treatment of search, nor access to user data[0], yet Roku says they did.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945280

also see[]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28945250

What you describe really only guarantees that at least one of the two is being deceptive.

"Both sides" meaning "both sides of Google's lying mouth".

Most likely but that doesn't exclude the possibility that Roku is dissembling as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com