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
Image used with permission by copyright holder
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.”

Recommended 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
Lulu Chang
Lulu Chang
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…
YouTube TV adds Magnolia Network and other FAST channels
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

YouTube TV has added a handful of channels of the FAST variety — that is, the sort of thing you'd find on an ad-supported service like Tubi or The Roku Channel. The additions are hardly the only FAST channels on the largest live-streaming service in the U.S., which has more than 5 million subscribers as of June 2022.

New to YouTube TV are Magnolia Network, Charge!, TBD TV, and T2. The CW also makes an appearance in the list of new channels after a new deal was reached earlier this spring.

Read more
Amazon’s new Echo Pop brings Alexa for $40; Echo Show 5 gets a revamp
Amazon Echo Pop in four colors.

In addition to new Echo Buds, Amazon today also announced new entries in the speaker and display categories, with the Echo Pop, a new Echo Show 5, and a new Echo Show 5 Kids.
“Customers around the world love Alexa as their trusted, personal AI — they’ve now purchased well over half a billion Alexa-enabled devices, and use of Alexa increased 35% last year,” Rohit Prasad, senior vice president and head scientist for Alexa, said in a press release. “These new devices give customers more options and more utility at an incredible value. And as with every Echo we’ve shipped, these devices will only continue to get better as we add even more generative AI-powered experiences for Alexa throughout the year.”

The Echo Pop looks like someone shaved the top off an Echo Dot, and the price is appropriately shaved as well. It's $10 less expensive than the Echo Dot, landing at $40 ... a pop. The front-facing speaker is directional, so maybe don't expect it to fill a room. But Amazon still says it has "full" sound. It also has support for Amazon's Eero mesh router network built in, with an Echo Pop able to extend a network up to another 1,000 square feet. The Echo Pop is available in Lavender Bloom, Midnight Teal, Charcoal, and Glacier White.

Read more
YouTube TV details fixes for audio sync, better 1080p quality
YouTube TV on Apple TV.

YouTube TV — the most popular live-streaming service service in the U.S. with more than 5 million subscribers — this week gave an update on Reddit on some bug squashing and upcoming features, plus some welcome improvements. It's an interesting bit of transparency in an age in which app changelogs are all but useless.

Probably the most interesting is that YouTube TV is "testing transcoding changes, including a bit rate increase for live 1080p content." Resolution — that's the 1080p number — is just one part of what makes up the quality of the picture on your screen. Bit rate is another. Basically it refers to the amount of data being pushed to make up that resolution — like the difference between a 1,080-piece puzzle with a picture made up of five colors, or one made up of 500 colors. Think of it like that. The higher the bit rate, the better the picture. And as we've discussed before, we'll take a 1080p stream with a higher bit rate over a bad 4K stream any day of the week, particularly when it comes to sports (which is exactly what we've seen with Apple's excellent MLS streams).

Read more