Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Smart Home
  3. News

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Google is yanking YouTube from Amazon Fire TV and Echo Show

Google says the Amazon Echo Show violates YouTube’s terms of service

Lulu Chang
Jenny McGrath
By and

amazon echo show
If you wanted to watch the trailer for Natalie Portman’s upcoming sci-fi movie Annihilation, you would probably go to YouTube. You might even ask Alexa to pull it up on your Amazon Echo Show. But not so fast — Google and Amazon aren’t playing together, as playing YouTube videos on the Echo Show apparently violates Google’s terms of service. Despite a recent workaround that allowed Echo Show users to continue accessing YouTube by going to the web browser, it looks like Google is now pulling its video service for good. And more importantly, the platform is also disappearing from Amazon’s Fire TV.

“We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services. But Amazon doesn’t carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn’t make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest’s latest products,” a YouTube spokesperson said. “Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and FireTV. We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.”

Related Videos

Starting Tuesday, December 5, YouTube will no longer be supported on the Echo Show. Folks who own Fire TVs will also begin seeing a notification alerting them to the fact that YouTube will no longer be available beginning January 1, 2018.  If you do ask Alexa to show a YouTube video, she snippily replies, “Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show.”

Previously, an Amazon statement to The Verge claimed that Google made the change “without explanation and without notification to customers.” Google responded, “We’ve been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working towards an agreement that provides great experiences for customers on both platforms. Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience.”

Considering videos are supposed to be the big draw of the Echo Show, this is quite a blow to Amazon and to device owners. The company touted it as a great fit for kitchen counters, where users could watch a video on the proper way to clean tomatillos as they are making a new recipe. There are still apps like the one from Food Network with videos, but they don’t have the amount and variety that YouTube does.

This isn’t the first time Google has blocked a device from accessing YouTube. In 2013, Windows Phone users found out they were unable to watch the site’s videos. When Microsoft re-released the app, it had a different design and ads, both in response to Google’s complaints.

There’s quite a history of bad blood between Amazon and Google. As YouTube noted in its most recent statement, the Google Chromecast wasn’t always available on Amazon, and Amazon Video wasn’t supported on the Google’s Android TV platform. And in fact, when the Fire TV first made its debut, it did so without YouTube support. In many ways, this simply marks the latest in a lengthy saga, and the folks really suffering from the dispute are … well, us. Hopefully, the two companies can reach an agreement soon. In the meantime, there are still some useful things you can do with your Show, like see your calendar or read a book.

Update: Google officially pulls YouTube from the Amazon Echo Show and Fire TV. 

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
What is Google Home?
Image of Google Home, 16:9 scale

Google Home is at the heart of Google’s smart home ecosystem. From video doorbells and security cameras to smart thermostats and smart speakers, Google Home gives you the versatility needed to control everything in your house. There’s a lot of nuance to the system, but getting started is simple -- just download the Google Home app to your smartphone, sync a compatible device, and you’re ready to start optimizing your daily routines.

Here's a closer look at everything you need to know about Google Home.
What is Google Nest, and how does it work with Google Home?

Read more
YouTube TV rolls out multiview: watch up to 4 NCAA games at once
An example of YouTube TV's multiview feature.

If you love college basketball and can process more than one game at a time, you're going to go bananas for YouTube TV's new multiview feature, which will be rolling out on a limited, early access basis starting March 14.  With multiview, you'll be able to pick up to four channels and see them all simultaneously, with the ability to easily flip the active audio from one to another. The new feature is compatible with any TV-based YouTube TV installations (streaming media players, smart TVs, and game consoles), but it doesn't yet work on mobile devices or computers.

Initially, multiview will only be available to select YouTube TV users, who will be chosen at random. But Google says the goal is to include every subscriber by the time NFL football season starts in the fall. Another limitation, at least for now, is that YouTube TV will preselect the multiview channels you can choose. At launch, only channels that carry NCAA tournament games will be included in that preselected list.
How to use YouTube TV multiview
If you're one of the lucky, randomly chosen users, you'll see an option to watch up to four preselected, different streams at once in your “Top Picks for You” section. After selecting multiview, you can switch audio and captions between streams, and jump in and out of a full-screen view of a game.
It's all about sports
At the moment, YouTube TV sees multiview as an enhancement of the sports viewing experience, so only sports content will be eligible. YouTube TV has had some big sports wins in 2022, including 4K coverage of the Soccer World Cup, and that trend will continue in 2023 thanks to its acquisition of the NFL Sunday Ticket games. However, YouTube TV recently lost access to MLB Network and the MLB.tv add-on, which reduces the amount of sports content available for multiview in 2023.

Read more
What to do if your Amazon Alexa app is not working
Alexa app on phone.

Amazon Alexa might be one of the most popular smart assistants, but it’s not without a few flaws. For instance, some users have experienced crashes while using the Amazon Alexa app -- and others have found the app to be entirely unresponsive.

Issues like this are typically picked up on by Amazon and immediately fixed with a patch, but sometimes there’s an issue on the user’s end that needs to be remedied before things start functioning as intended. If your Amazon Alexa app is not working or responding, here are a few ways to fix it.
Check for a software update

Read more