Google and Amazon followed through on their peace pact this morning.
The official YouTube app is coming back to Amazon’s Fire TV devices as part of an agreement that also brings Amazon’s Prime Video app to Google’s Chromecast devices. The tech rivals announced the news in a pair of blog posts this morning.
The missing piece remains Amazon’s Echo Show, which was also stripped of the official YouTube app as part of the original dispute between the companies. Echo Show competes with Google’s Nest Hub devices. No word from the companies yet on when or whether YouTube might return to the Echo Show.
The issue dates back about four years. Amazon pulled Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast from its online store in 2015 because the devices didn’t work well with the Prime Video streaming service. In September 2017, Google pulled YouTube from Amazon’s Echo Show, citing a terms of service violation. After that, multiple products made by Google-owned Nest disappeared from Amazon’s e-commerce marketplace.
YouTube returned to the Echo Show in November 2017, but Google pulled it again a couple weeks later. That’s when the search giant made the call to remove YouTube from Fire TV and Fire TV Stick devices, citing what it called a “lack of reciprocity” from Amazon.
Amazon had offered a workaround in the meantime, providing access to YouTube on Fire TV via a web browser, which we found perfectly adequate.
However, the return of the official YouTube app means that Amazon customers will have access to advanced features including Alexa support for searching for content within the YouTube app.
