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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

#261

Post by narrowingorbits »

SwellJoe wrote: post #256

It's easy to paint Amazon as the bad actor here...and, they are. But, I think Google and Apple are also bad actors in this situation. The reason Google and Apple TV devices have a bad Amazon Prime experience, I suspect, is because they want a huge cut of revenue from Amazon Prime viewership (just as they expect a huge cut of revenue for anything sold on their platform), and they aren't being reasonable about getting…

Nope. Incorrect. Google and Apple both have open SDKs for streaming to their devices. Amazon has chosen not to support them

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

#262

Post by javajosh »

The idealists here call it a mistake, violating various capitalist principles. The clever argument against Amazon is that they are betraying that they think their product is weak, and can't stand competition.

The deeper, more pragmatic issue is that this is a browser war. The browsers are weird because they are TV dongles. Some hardware manufacturers want to give us browsers that only work for some sites.

I pay Netflix $20/mo to synchronize some of their streams into my brain, through a complicated path involving a world-wide internet, LEDs, and my eye-balls. Why does the hardware path through which those bits flow have to matter? Netflix, Prime, HBO, Comedy Central - aren't all of these just sources of those stream?

My question is whether all of this is because Prime won't support certain hardware paths, or because certain hardware won't support Prime. (Given what I know about Chromecast, I'd say it's the former).

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

#263

Post by yohui »

VikingCoder wrote: post #198
Spoom wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

In some regions (apparently Japan): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.avo...

In others: http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Amazon-Video/dp/B00N28818A

For most users, installing the Amazon Appstore is required.

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

#264

Post by SwellJoe »

narrowingorbits wrote: post #261
SwellJoe wrote: post #256

It's easy to paint Amazon as the bad actor here...and, they are. But, I think Google and Apple are also bad actors in this situation. The reason Google and Apple TV devices have a bad Amazon Prime experience, I suspect, is because they want a huge cut of revenue from Amazon Prime viewership (just as they expect a huge cut of revenue for anything sold on their platform), and they aren't being reasonable about getting…

Nope. Incorrect. Google and Apple both have open SDKs for streaming to their devices. Amazon has chosen not to support them

Ah, then Amazon is just being an ass.

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

#265

Post by xiaomai »

sandGorgon wrote: post #89
RIMR wrote: post #33

Well, if I needed a reason not to buy a Fire Stick, here it is. If you can't sell your product without striking down competitor's products, than clearly your competitors have a better product.

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 have the chromecast and the Fire stick. I love my chromecast, I impuse bought the fire stick when it first came out and was selling for really cheap.

I like the fire stick because my kids can use it (they don't have devices to control the chromecast with). I don't like basically everything else about it:

- poor app selection (everything I've ever wanted to use (except Amazon Prime) works on my Chromecast, the Fire stick is only good for Amazon/Netflix content (there's a few other things out there, but not enough to matter). - poor playback: once it gets going, the fire stick is fine, but when it first starts streaming stuff it tends to stutter. This drives me crazy.

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

#266

Post by j4kp07 »

To be fair...Google and Apple are doing the same thing to Amazon (shutting out a competitor). Tivo and Roku both offer PrimeTV and both are sold thru Amazon. So the theory that this is soley to block out competitors is demonstrably false. Business is business and Amazon is biting back. Shouting "boycott" seems extreme and won't have an affect on their bottomline anyways.

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

#267

Post by dragonwriter »

balls187 wrote: post #250
cracoucax wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they're also a marketplace and they require their vendors to ban the same products. It's not an ecommerce strategy, they're very clearly using their huge leverage as the #1 ecommerce on the internet to attack their competitors and lure customers into their walled garden. I'm pretty sure in my country this will be forbidden by antitrust laws.

> I'm pretty sure in my country this will be forbidden by antitrust laws. On the surface, perhaps. However from the article, this is in response to seemingly anti-competitive practices by both Apple and Google's strategies regarding Amazon Prime on their TV devices. Apple and Google are acting like walled gardens, and so Amazon is retaliating. My guess is Amazons desired outcome is Apple and Google support Amazon Pri…

> However from the article, this is in response to seemingly anti-competitive practices by both Apple and Google's strategies regarding Amazon Prime on their TV devices.

The article doesn't say that at all. The Amazon statement quoted in the article says that the items don't "work well" with Prime Video, but doesn't blame that on "anti-competitive practices" by Apple or Google -- which is good, because the reason it doesn't work on Chromecast, at least, is simply that Amazon has chosen not to implement Chromecast support -- and it doesn't work on Android TV devices, except Sony Smart TVs, because Amazon has actively blocked those devices.

Apple does have generally stronger controls, and it may be that there is an Apple policy issue affecting Prime on Apple TV, but I suspect that that's not the case, and that, as for Chromecast, Apple TV doesn't "work well" with Prime because Amazon has made a decision not to have it work well with Prime.

> My guess is Amazons desired outcome is Apple and Google support Amazon Prime video Apple TV and Chromecast.

If Amazon wants Chromecast to support Amazon Prime, all they have to do is build support for the Chromecast API into Amazon Prime mobile and/or Web apps.

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

#269

Post by Splines »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #177
Splines wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The should use the competitor's pages as an opportunity to upsell prime-compatible devices. Show a "Prime Video" logo crossed out that you can click on that takes you to a page telling you why Prime is so much better than whatever you're trying to buy. (I don't know if that gets into legal hot waters or not, but couldn't be worse than actually not selling competing devices.) If someone wants to buy an Apple TV, chanc…

Or, you know, just implement Chromecast support in their apps. There's SDKs to do so, and netflix, hulu and others have already done so.

Their lack of support for other devices is almost certainly intentional. (I'm surprised at the amount of sway the hardware teams appear to have over the Prime Video app team. Someone very high up is preventing this from happening for strategic reasons.)

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

#270

Post by c3534l »

This sounds like anti-competitive behavior. Even if legal, as someone who spends literally thousands of dollars a year on their site and have been for over a decade now, this will cause me to look for alternatives. I admired amazon because they were often aggressively pro-customer. But this move will not benefit their customers. They may well wind up destroying the customer loyalty they've built up over the years with this really stupid decision.
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