A WAR between two of the world's biggest tech giants will lead to millions of consumers losing access to YouTube.
Users of Amazon's streaming devices Fire TV and Fire Stick have received notifications that the YouTube app will be unusable by the end of the year.
It is the result of a dispute between Google and Amazon which escalated in late 2015, when Amazon stopped selling Google’s Chromecast streaming adapter, which previously was the top-selling streaming device on Amazon.com.
Amazon has never sold Google’s Home smart speaker and later booted some of Google-owned Nest products. That came after Google blocked YouTube on Amazon's Echo Show in September.
Google has blamed Amazon’s unwillingness to strike deal with them for the move.
A spokesman said: “We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services.
"But Amazon doesn’t carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn’t make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest’s latest products.
"Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and FireTV. We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.”
Amazon hit back saying: “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube’s existing website.
"We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible.”
UK users of Fire TV and Fire Stick have received online warnings that the YouTube app will not be usable at the end of the year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article