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Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

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Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#191

Post by gtremper »

spdustin wrote: post #73
Borjez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Apple Store doesn't sell Amazon devices, does that make the Apple Store anti-competitive?

Probably not. Apple Stores are in business to sell Apple products, always have been. Amazon sells everything, always has. So that's one point. Also, we don't know that Apple would not carry FireTV if Amazon solicited for space in Apple's retail store the same as any other 3rd party vendor. I don't necessarily think this is anticompetitive on the part of Amazon, either. I DO think it's a cheap shot, and alienates me a…

Amazon only sold books originally, and they still don't sell "everything"

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#193

Post by user_235711 »

This definitely seems like a bad move, and not very customer-centric. It reminds me of when they disabled the download of any mobile browser alternatives in the 2nd-Generation Kindle Fire in order to push their Silk browser (which itself was terrible nearly to the point of being unusable). This is not to say that Amazon Instant Video is not a great service. It's pretty awesome IMO. But forcing people who want alternatives to seek them out elsewhere will just inconvenience them and drive them away from amazon.com.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#194

Post by dntrkv »

apetresc wrote: post #163
debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. They're going to get sued.

How is this different from suing Apple for not selling Chromecasts in Apple stores?

Because Apple stores don't hold a significant share of the retail market and Apple stores have never sold Chromecasts and aren't expected to sell them, Amazon on the other hand did sell them and is expected to sell them. If Amazon was an Amazon-product-only type store, this would be viewed very differently. This is blatantly anti-competitive behavior, the equivalent of Google de-indexing Spotify to "prevent confusion" with their Google Music product.

I'll bet that this decision will be either quickly reversed, if not, they can expect retaliation from Google/Apple in the form of lawsuits and/or their own versions of this rule.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#195

Post by jkestner »

robwilliams wrote: post #172
cordite wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a device comes with a useable app store, I'd rather it not come with tons of bloatware for every service ever out of the box. At this point it just seems Amazon is touting their weight.

This move is obviously them using their position in the marketplace but I would imagine they would avoid the App Store as Apple takes a significant chunk of every purchase.

Millions of people using the Kindle app on iOS deal with the workaround. You just can't buy within the app.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#196

Post by sandGorgon »

RIMR wrote: post #139
sandGorgon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone here have a Kindle Fire Stick? It seems to already have dual band, has double the memory/ghz of a chromecast and most importantly - does not need a phone or computer to work. It comes with an independent remote control and built in apps to run. Plus, it already has Spotify. I'm wondering why you would get the Chromecast over the Fire Stick.

I always have a phone, tablet or computer within reach, so it's not a problem to have no dedicated remote (one less thing cluttering my living room, actually). I also use legal-greyarea services like Put.io, which only work on Chromecast because of how open the ecosystem is. Before this I used a Boxee Box, which I preferred over the competitors because you could load it full of homebrew (including Put.io). The Chrome…

actually a lot of people have made the web-analytics-dashboard-for-the-workplace-on-TV using the fire stick. it's fairly open.

https://github.com/amzn/web-app-starter-kit-for-fire-tv

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#197

Post by [deleted] »

nerfhammer wrote: post #19
driverdan wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It came to a close a long time ago. Amazon refuses to sell many legal products, eg caffeine powder and anything with the confederate flag.

There is a difference between refusing to sell things you think are unethical even if you disagree with the reasoning vs. refusing to sell things for baldly anti-competitive reasons

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#198

Post by VikingCoder »

Spoom wrote: post #176
zaphar wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was just complaining about this very thing. The solution to Prime's streaming issues isn't to ban the sale of Chromecasts it's to add Chromecast support to prime. This is a very odd choice on their part.

Hell, until recently, you couldn't play Prime Video on Android at all without resorting to Flash trickery in the browser. (But, of course, you could play it on Fire OS devices, even though they're running a fork of Android.) Amazon really does not like Google. This is not a failure on Google's part, this is all of Amazon's own making in an attempt at product lock-in.

...I had Prime Video working on my Android phone a while back, but it no longer works.

Is there a new, new way to get it to work that I don't know about?

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#199

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

robwilliams wrote: post #144
yid wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are destroying their most valuable component of their brand, for a relatively weak one (Prime Video). This is why it almost seems like Amazon's Google+ moment: one underperforming product area somehow manages to convince leadership to change the company's underlying principles in its advantage to the long-term detriment of overall brand perception. Edit: 32 points in 19 mins for this comment. I really hope som…

That's an interesting point. When Google started pushing G+ social networks in general was all the tech media were talking about. Now it's the death of cable and the rise of streaming services. And just like Google wanted it's piece of the buzz-worthy social media space, Amazon wants a piece of the growing streaming market. It's certainly not a good precedent to set banning competitor's products from their store. I c…

G+ is vestigial at best and creepy at worst, but at least there's something to be said about a giant sprawling octopus of a tech company managing to wrap everything into one, centralized platform.

Amazon on the other hand seems to be subscribing to the amputation school of thought. I don't know a soul that's ever bought an Amazon gadget that wasn't exclusively named "Kindle." If people truly preferred Amazon's devices to those from Apple or Google, they would have bought them.

Re: Amazon Will Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices

#200

Post by BryantD »

madrox wrote: post #171

Why is it when Apple does this to an app for the same reasons, it's ok? I suspect their announcement was a copy/paste of Apple's Kindle app rejection on the app store (when it included the option to buy books).

Did Apple ever reject the Kindle app? They rejected Sony's app; from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/technology/01apple.html?_r...:

“We have not changed our developer terms or guidelines,” Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said Tuesday. “We are now requiring that if an app offers customers the ability to purchase books outside of the app, that the same option is also available to customers from within the app with in-app purchase.”

So not a copy/paste of that, either.

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