Amazon and Google End Boycott of Each Others' Video Services
YouTube will soon be available on Amazon’s Fire TV while Amazon Prime Video will show up on Google’s Chromecast and Android TV.
(Bloomberg) -- The frosty relationship between Google and Amazon.com Inc. thawed a little further.
The two tech giants said Thursday they would begin letting each others’ video services appear on their respective streaming gadgets. YouTube will soon be available on Amazon’s Fire TV while Amazon Prime Video will show up on Google’s Chromecast and Android TV devices, the companies said in a statement.
The two companies have feuded before when it comes to businesses they both operate in. Amazon stopped selling Google’s home assistant devices, which compete with the retailer’s Alexa speakers, on its website in 2015 but lifted the boycott at the end of 2017. YouTube hasn’t been available on Amazon devices since 2017.
Streaming is a crowded field, with companies like Roku Inc. and Apple Inc. competing on the hardware side and tech and media companies alike jumping deeper into the streaming business. Walt Disney Co. joined the fray this month with a $6.99-a-month streaming service carrying popular content like Star Wars and Marvel superhero movies. Reaching a detente might help Amazon and Google continue to grow their user bases and fend off smaller rivls.
As Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Amazon expand, they compete in new and bigger categories. Google is chasing Amazon’s lead in cloud services and home assistant devices, while Amazon is quickly building an online advertising empire that’s beginning to edge into Google’s traditional territory.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gerrit De Vynck in New York at gdevynck@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jillian Ward at jward56@bloomberg.net, Molly Schuetz, Robin Ajello
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