YouTube is landing on Amazons Fire TV while Prime Video will come to Chromecast

http://bit.ly/2sIw4z8

YouTube is landing on Amazon’s Fire TV, while Prime Video will come to Chromecast

http://bit.ly/2PgVzQv

Amazon and Google have announced an end to a longstanding feud today, as the duo revealed that their respective services will be made available on each other’s platforms.

Over the next few months, Amazon’s range of Fire TV devices — including set-top boxes, sticks, and smart TVs — will get their very own official YouTube app. Later in the year, the separate YouTube TV and YouTube Kids apps will also be made available on these devices. It’s worth noting here that no mention is made of support for Amazon’s Echo Show, which Google started blocking YouTube access on alongside Fire TV back in 2017, though Amazon eventually found a workaround of sorts.

Convergence

While Amazon and Google both began life as completely different propositions — one an online bookstore, the other a search engine — their paths have converged, as both expanded into all manner of services including cloud computing, voice-activated digital assistants, phones and tablets, video-streaming services, and more. This is the root cause of the recent disputes between the two firms, with Amazon kicking Google’s media-streaming hardware Chromecast off its retail website in 2015, alongside Apple TV. Both these devices compete with Amazon’s Fire TV, while neither of these devices featured Amazon’s Prime TV streaming service — however, Amazon and Apple kissed and made up back in 2017.

A few months back, Amazon started selling Chromecast again, which laid the foundation for today’s announcement.

Indeed, the Prime Video app will soon be compatible with all Chromecast-enabled devices, meaning that Prime Video users won’t have to buy a dedicated Fire TV stick or hope that their smart TV has a built-in Prime Video app — they can beam their videos directly to the big screen through Chromecast.

Additionally, Prime Video will also be made available on Android TV devices, bringing Google’s TV platform into line with other TV operating systems such as Samsung, which already offers the Prime Video app.

“We are excited to work with Amazon to launch the official YouTube apps on Fire TV devices worldwide,” noted YouTube’s head of product partnerships Heather Rivera, in a press release. “Bringing our flagship YouTube experience to Amazon Fire TV gives our users even more ways to watch the videos and creators they love.”

This partnership is a long-time coming, and it goes a long way toward removing customers from the crossfire of two of the world’s biggest technology competitors.

Business

via VentureBeat https://venturebeat.com

April 18, 2019 at 09:10AM