Amazon Claim Google Has Pulled YouTube from Echo Show Devices

E-commerce giant Amazon has claimed that Google is no longer supporting YouTube playback on the Amazon Echo Show device.

Reuters reports that Amazon has claimed that YouTube will no longer be supported on the company’s Amazon Echo Show device due to support for the product being pulled by Google. This means that owners of Amazon Echo Show devices won’t be able to play any videos using the YouTube app. Amazon said in a statement, “As of this afternoon, Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show, without explanation and without notification to customers. There is no technical reason for that decision, which is disappointing and hurts both of our customers.”

Google responded to the decision to no longer support the device, stating that they had been in negotiations with Amazon for some time over the use of the YouTube app on the Echo Show device, “We’ve been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working towards an agreement that provides great experiences for customers on both platforms,” it said in a statement. “Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon.”

The Echo Show was capable of displaying YouTube videos but did not give users access to key YouTube features such as channel subscriptions and video recommendations.  Analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research said in a statement, “It’s a bit of a blow to Amazon. YouTube is one of the big video services that they had in addition to their own. For that to disappear means a big chunk of the possible video content you could watch on Echo Show is now gone.”

Amazon has however come to an agreement with another tech giant, Apple. The Verge reports that Amazon has agreed to relist the Apple TV for the first time since 2015. The decision to relist the Apple TV comes just shortly after the announcement that Apple TV would soon be supporting the Amazon Prime app, allowing users to watch Amazon video content on the device. The app is not available on the Apple TV yet but is expected to be available on the device in the near future.