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News that Google is dropping support for YouTube on Amazon-branded set-top boxes, personal assistants, and set-top boxes is being used by anti-Net Neutrality forces to claim those two companies are a much bigger problems for Net Neutrality than cable and phone companies.
Google will make YouTube unavailable to Amazon device owners on Jan. 1, 2018, with the suggestion the company might change its mind if Amazon agrees to carry Chromecast and Google Home devices on its website and support casting Prime Video.
The last straw may have been Amazon’s decision to drop some of Nest’s newest products last month. Nest is owned by Google.
“Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and FireTV,” said a Google spokesperson to Multichannel News. “We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.”
“Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube’s existing website,” Amazon responded in a statement. “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible.”
The dispute was welcomed by anti Net Neutrality forces, who proclaimed consumers were the victims of Amazon.com and Google, not AT&T, Comcast, and other large telecom companies.
#Google and #Amazon are blocking their customers from getting what they want on the Internet the way they want it, yet claim to be #NetNeutrality purists. nothing neutral about Google and Amazon’s behavior here… #HypocrisyMuch https://t.co/pWmQYgAMTy
— Scott Cleland (@SCleland) December 5, 2017
USTelecom, a group sponsored by the nation’s biggest telephone companies, also pounced on the dispute. CEO Jonathan Spalter:
“Broadband ISPs are committed to providing an open internet for their customers, including protections like no content blocking or throttling,” he said. “Seems like some of the biggest internet companies can’t say the same. Ironic, isn’t it?”
(Headline corrected. Thanks to Morgan Wick.)
Does not surprise me about amazon.I have seen complaints, more then once, about how amazon refuses to sell stuff that is competition to them. They try to get a monopoly on areas of things that they sell doing this. I got their 7″ kindle fire, with advertisements stating about how you can hook the fires up to a TV with a firestick.. Then after I bought it, found that the 7″ are not compatible, only their 8″?? and higher versions are. Funny how they did not tell that when you purchase them. I got their fire stick to try and… Read more »
Should have bought one of the Chinese boxes from eBay instead. So cheap you could buy 7 or 8 for the price of the Amazon thing and no subs if you don’t want them. Then you could put Amazon stuff next to any other company’s wares without a peep from Amazon.
Amazon is easy to tame or just ignore, the ISPs are not.
I agree amazon is easy to ignore, but, the fact is, a monopoly is a monopoly.. what amazon is doing is no different then the ISP providers. The only real difference is platform. Get some better, local ISP to compete with the big companies, and there will be no difference there either. Here, they are starting to put fiber in thee area from a local company. Verizon refused to do it. The local company is offering better prices, with faster service for that price. Once they get established, and get all the lines run, the big greedy companies will be… Read more »
Amazon is far from a Monopoly. In fact I do most my purchasing from a direct competitor system call EBay. I can generally find things cheaper on EBay then Amazon. The benefit of Amazon is the two day shipping, but you have to pay a premium for that. In that respect WalMart is giving them a run for their money. Point is that Amazon as a platform is not a monopoly and the products they offer are defiantly not a necessity and do have some viable options if you feel the NEED for them. Comparing what an ISP does and… Read more »
I am failing to see the difference between the 2. OK, you say that amazon has competition.. But, there are places that have multiple internet options too. Here, we have verizon DSL, Spectum internet, and now Velocity is starting to install fiber. Plus, there are ways to get internet through cell companies too. Granted, it is not the cheapest way, but it is still an option. I would call that some choices.. Say spectrum decided to throttle netflix, then you can simply switch to velocity, or wireless through the cell companies, or even maybe verizon DSL which may not. One… Read more »
“anti Net Neutrality forces, who proclaimed consumers were the victims of Amazon.com and Google, not AT&T, Comcast, and other large telecom companies.” So, the free e-mail company and the discount (non-subscription) company are the one’s holding us hostage? Geez, i would have thought the ISPs who introduced bandwidth caps and charged ridiculous rates and fees (remember the technology fee?). These were the companies who started in Hollywood, bought cable companies when people weren’t going to theaters because they became too damn expensive.. then, when Netflix started drawing customers away and people started downloading from Amazon, they bought up ISPs to… Read more »
Depends on if that is “Time Warner” the media company, or “Time Warner Cable”. I can not say TWC was the best, as they were far from it, as a company.. But I will take them over “most” internet providers out there these days. At least TWC would give you discounts if you asked, and they had unlimited internet plans, that people “could” afford.. Like there ELP (Every day low price) plans, that started at just $15. One single buy of a cable modem, and no lease fees too. Most people could afford $15 a month.. Spectrum bought them out,… Read more »