Ah, the love between Amazon and Google shows itself once more…. NOT! It appears that the latest spat between the two giants is over YouTube and the newish Amazon Echo Show.
Users of the new Alexa-powered smart device were cut off from YouTube yesterday with a warning that the smart speaker was unable to play content from the world’s largest video site. Amazon states that they are disappointed, laying the blame at the feet of Google. Google, in return, indicates that the reason for the shutdown is due to a violation of the terms of service and that they made Amazon aware that Tuesday was the drop date.
As my father always said when I would get in trouble with my brother, the goal here is to find out who is lying the least. Google for their part has done similar cut offs in the past with Microsoft. Several years ago Google prevented Windows Phone devices from accessing YouTube because of violations of terms of service. For Windows Phone, there never was an official YouTube app. For Amazon, this could well be a test of if they can survive without Google at all. The company is increasingly competitive with Google on a wide range of fronts up to and including their own app store for their FireOS-based devices. But YouTube is a bit of a different matter.
Google indicates that they have been negotiating with Amazon to get the ToS issue sorted out but could not reach an agreement.
Ultimately the one who suffers in all of this is the end user of the Amazon Echo Show. There is no work around for this on the device so until this disagreement is settled between Google & Amazon, you are out of luck.
