When the Echo Show first launched, one of its biggest draws was the ability to watch YouTube on it. Google pulled the YouTube app from the Show in September claiming that it didn't follow the company's terms of service, but in late November, YouTube made an appearance on the Show once again in the form of a web browser. Now, Google is striking back even harder.
A spokeswoman for Google recently talked with CNET and announced that YouTube would be disappearing from not only the Echo Show on January 1, but also all of Amazon's Fire TV devices.
Per the spokeswoman:
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.
Followed up by:
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.
The removal of YouTube from the Echo Show was already a big enough pain when it first happened, but eliminating YouTube from Amazon's much more popular Fire TV products will likely hurt the company quite a bit more. I don't know about you, but if I had a Fire TV, this would be reason enough for me to jump ship to something like Roku or Android TV.
If you're heavily invested in Amazon's digital video services and the removal of YouTube is a deal-breaker, you have other options out there. All Roku devices can access the Amazon Video app, and on the Android TV side of things, the NVIDIA Shield TV is still your only way for consuming Amazon content.
It's unclear how long YouTube will remain absent from the Echo Show and Fire TV, but in any case, this is not good news for Amazon fans.
