The ongoing battle between Amazon and Google got a new chapter today.
The YouTube app on Amazon Fire TV devices has been deactivated today, days before the date that Google had planned on pulling it. Now when Fire TV users open the YouTube app, they're greeted by a message that gives them links to YouTube.com using the Fire TV's new Silk and Firefox browsers.
Neither Google nor Amazon have commented on this news, so it's unclear if Google decided to pull YouTube from the Fire TV early or if Amazon was the one that deactivated the app.
This story began back in September when Google pulled YouTube from the Amazon Echo Show, saying that Amazon's implementation violated Google's terms of service and created a broken user experience. Amazon then made a workaround and got YouTube back on the Echo Show, but Google pulled it again shortly thereafter, saying that it was pulling YouTube because Amazon didn't sell Google products like the Chromecast and Google Home. Google also said that it'd pull YouTube from Amazon's Fire TV devices on January 1, 2018.
More recently, it looked like Google and Amazon's battle may be coming to an end. Amazon began selling Google Chromecast devices and Google said that it was in "productive discussions" with Amazon regarding YouTube on the Echo Show and Fire TV. Now it looks like those discussions may not be as productive as we thought, because the YouTube app on Fire TV devices is no more.
It's kind of crazy that this fight between Google and Amazon is still going on. The battle hurts consumers of both companies, preventing YouTube fans from accessing the service on Amazon's hardware. Hopefully Google and Amazon can settle things soon and get YouTube back on Amazon's hardware.
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