It turns out that even bitter rivals can play nice, as proven by the Amazon and Google’s upcoming partnership.
The two industry giants revealed last Thursday that they will be teaming up in the coming months, at least with regards to their streaming services.
The two companies have always had a very rocky, and public, relationship with each other. One of the most controversial moves that Amazon has made against Google is when it refused to sell Google devices like the Chromecast on its massive online store. Meanwhile, Google is also known to have blocked access to YouTube from Amazon devices like the Echo Show.
Even with this new partnership though, it seems like Google’s and Amazon’s motives are far from friendly. While the two have promised to support each other’s streaming services through their respective platforms, there seems to have been no adjustments made regarding their past disputes. The Amazon Echo Show still cannot access YouTube and Chromecasts still aren’t available on Amazon.com.
Instead, the partnership looks like it’s purely a business move, following Apple’s announcement of its own video streaming service, the Apple TV Plus, as well as the new Disney Plus service. Both of these services will be available on a wider range of devices, at least when compared to Google’s YouTube Red and Amazon’s Prime Video. Hence, adding support for the other company’s streaming service could give subscribers a bigger incentive to choose their service, or their device, over the others.
With the new partnership, Amazon’s Prime Video will soon be available on Chromecast, Chromecast-built-in, and Android TV, while Google is now adding YouTube support for Amazon Fire TV and smart TVs with built-in Fire TV.
