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Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

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Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#101

Post by throwawayboise »

malka wrote: post #53
fra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite ready to take out the pitchforks... > Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chip sets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast. This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support > Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands…

> This is both what many users would expect If I'm watching a video on youtube and ask to play music, no I do NOT want at all youtube to handle that. Youtube music is crap. Google has proven many times that they are totally unable to manage music. They should stop to try, because it is utterly embarrassing.

> Youtube music is crap

It's good enough for a lot of people. I pay for YouTube Premium, so I get YouTube music (formerly Google Play Music) included, and it works well enough that I'm not going to pay for a separate music app.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#102

Post by adamsvystun »

calderwoodra wrote: post #57

Either the journalist has interpreted Roku's claims incorrectly, or Roku is spreading falsehoods. It's a very common practice for streaming services to make crazy demands about the devices they're on. Roku[1], Google TV[2] and Firesticks[3] all have Netflix buttons on the remote not because they wanted them there, but because Netflix forces them to with the threat that they will blacklist their device. And inevitably…

I think the difference here is that Netflix does not make the devices themselves, so they are an equal outside force on the market of smart tv devices. Google on the other hand is using it's YouTube product to influence things on the device side, where they have Chromecast as direct competitor.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#103

Post by saltedonion »

cptskippy wrote: post #88
smt88 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app) No, it's not. Most YouTube users have a different primary music app. Google is trying to artificially force a marriage of YouTube and YouTube Music because they have utterly failed to do it in the product experience and user base themselves. If I'm watching a random YouTube video and then want to switch to music, I…

As a Roku user who thinks Google takes a pretty hostile approach to anyone using their App on Roku, I disagree. If I'm in an App and search, I expect my search to be localized to that App. That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to…

It doesn’t matter what the consumer prefers. This battle is about the _ability_ to implement a feature, and that power should reside with the application developer.

Monopolists can often have batter products as well as charging monopolistic pricing.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#104

Post by tyre »

calderwoodra wrote: post #57

Either the journalist has interpreted Roku's claims incorrectly, or Roku is spreading falsehoods. It's a very common practice for streaming services to make crazy demands about the devices they're on. Roku[1], Google TV[2] and Firesticks[3] all have Netflix buttons on the remote not because they wanted them there, but because Netflix forces them to with the threat that they will blacklist their device. And inevitably…

Might the difference here be that Netflix doesn't have a competing product?

Google could be incentivized to put onerous requirements on Roku which result in a worse user experience, price increases, or additional development time. That would benefit Chromecast.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#105

Post by the_lonely_road »

This kind of tactic works. I have 3 rokus in a box collecting dust and two brand new Fire sticks that replaced them. I didn't want to do this but 85% of my streaming time is spent on Twitch.tv and I wasn't able to use my Roku's to stream it anymore.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#106

Post by izacus »

8note wrote: post #70
908B64B197 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. If their app is open and full screen, search within the app first.

The distinction is that YouTube and YouTube music are different apps

They're not on TVs. YTM is a section inside YT app on the TV.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#107

Post by 8ytecoder »

cptskippy wrote: post #88
smt88 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is both what many users would expect (if I have an app open, voice search works within that app) No, it's not. Most YouTube users have a different primary music app. Google is trying to artificially force a marriage of YouTube and YouTube Music because they have utterly failed to do it in the product experience and user base themselves. If I'm watching a random YouTube video and then want to switch to music, I…

As a Roku user who thinks Google takes a pretty hostile approach to anyone using their App on Roku, I disagree. If I'm in an App and search, I expect my search to be localized to that App. That being said, f*k Roku and their voice remote. They've been pushing that crap hard. Showing prompts on screen for upwards of 30 seconds to push the Mic button. I don't want my remote to have a microphone or be able to listen to…

The behaviour I expect is that the voice search is global except when I specifically go to the search screen of the app. That’s how it works on Apple TV and that’s what is intuitive to me.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#108

Post by [deleted] »

agilob wrote: post #75
fra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite ready to take out the pitchforks... > Roku says Google has threatened to require Roku to use certain chip sets or memory cards that would force Roku to increase the price of its hardware product, which competes directly with Google's Chromecast. This could simply mean Google is requiring chips with hardware VP9 support > Roku alleges Google has asked it to favor YouTube music results from voice commands…

>This is both what many users would expect So if your default search engine in firefox is duckduckgo, but you're currently on google.com/maps reading reviews of a car service, firefox should use google for your next search request?

[deleted]

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#109

Post by Nadya »

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #95
Nadya wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"When searching within an app, favor results from that app" vs >"When searching within an app, favor results from a related app" There is a big difference between these two things. "Youtube" is not the same as "Youtube Music" in the same way that "Xbox" is not the same as "Xbox Live". As p49k explained it - if you were trying to send an email from YouTube would you expect Gmail to come up or your preferred email app…

Sending an email is a different interaction than doing voice search. Sending an email is an explicit intent - open whatever app I use to send emails. Searching is an open query - find the most relevant results. What results are most relevant is subjective, hence why you would give the user a choice for what results to favor. The separation between Youtube and Youtube Music is a technical minutia, they're both Youtube…

>Sending an email is a different interaction than doing voice search.

Going from watching videos to playing music is a different interaction than doing voice search.

>Sending an email is an explicit intent - open whatever app I use to send emails.

Using a global voice commands (not search) has explicit behavior - use whatever app I have set to default for the functionality I am requesting. "Play Stairway to Heaven" should use my default music app. Note that "voice commands" is different from "voice search" in this context and is the alleged problem.

>Searching is an open query - find the most relevant results.

If I use Spotify as my default music app it is because I trust their music search more than YouTube Music. Otherwise YouTube Music would be my default music app.

There is also a massive contextual difference between a global Voice Search (using the Voice search icon on the Roku remote: it searches Roku) and using the Speech to Text option that may appear when already searching within a search field (which uses the search field of the app itself, in this case: Youtube)

>The separation between Youtube and Youtube Music is a technical minutia, they're both Youtube just different apps.

Google deciding there is a difference between the two means that there is a difference between the two for both a marketing perspective and whatever minor technical differences there are. If there were no differences there would not be a YouTube Music app and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Re: Roku says it may lose YouTube TV app after Google made anti-competitive demands

#110

Post by larntz »

efdee wrote: post #61
sniperjzp wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, you can play YouTube without any problem on Firestick, they made the change 2 years ago. Second, you should give the new Chromecast device a try, it's far much better than Roku. Third, Google is asking Roku to support VP9, which is a much superior video coding format, I don't see any issue with this ask.

Either YouTube requires VP9 and then everybody has to implement it, or it allows other codecs and leaves Roku alone. What's the point of singling them out?

Also if the answer is try using another Google product(chromecast) to get a good experience that kind of validates Roku's complaint.
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