Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Google pulls YouTube from the Echo Show

Last week I was disappointed to find that I could no longer play YouTube videos on my Echo Show.  I asked Alexa to play a particular video and her response was that "Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on the Echo Show".

After a little googling I found that Amazon and Google have been in negotiations for a while but Google pulled YouTube because the Echo implementation violates their terms of service and creates a broken experience, but they hope to reach an agreement and resolve the issue soon.

So each company is blaming the other and the customer loses, very unfortunate.  My guess is googles issue if that on the Echo you can't subscribe, comment, like or most importantly view and click on ads.  That is a whole revenue stream google is missing out on so that are taking their ball and leaving.

My guess is the Amazon could just serve up YouTube videos through a web browser which the Echo show must have.  Then ads and all the other functionality would be available and wouldn't violate their TOS.

For me the loss of YouTube on the Echo Show is kind of a big deal as I am not an Amazon Prime or Music Subscriber  so I have no way to listen to music on the show.  But that may be a non issue now that Sonos has released Alexa integration.  I will post about the Sonos/Alexa Integration after I have had a chance to play with it a little more.  So far though it looks pretty good.

I think as more companies get into the home automation and music streaming game there will be more and more issues like this as the companies jockey to come out on top.  Will be interesting to see how it all plays out over the next couple years.

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