Starting at the end of this month, Amazon will no longer sell the Chromecast or Apple TV. And that’s their right. But it’s also another in a long series of dumb, anti-consumer moves that has now crossed the line from annoying to downright dickish.
How the Amazon vs. Google Battle Began
Chromecast users have been upset about the lack of Amazon Prime for a while, but the Amazon-Google grudge didn’t start with the Chromecast. Amazon’s ongoing battle with Google largely stems from the fact that, unlike most manufacturers, Amazon wants to use Android, but be completely independent from Google at the same time. When a company like Samsung, Motorola, or LG make an Android device, they use Google’s Play Store to distribute apps, as well as Google Play Services to add features to their apps.
Amazon is the notable outlier. Instead of making Google’s version of Android, they made their own variant for the Kindle Fire, complete with their own non-Google app store. And in fact, Android was meant to be an open platform where people could do exactly that. If you want to use Google’s services, you have to abide by some rules, but anyone is free to make their own Android ecosystem if they so desire. So Amazon did.
The problem is, Google and Amazon still need to occasionally work together. Amazon has its own shopping app on the Play Store, but the company also wants to push its own app store for Android. Google, however, doesn’t allow app stores to be distributed on the Play Store. Part of this is about protecting their home turf—after all, Walmart would never allow a Target store inside a Walmart—but also for security and compatibility reasons. Google can’t vet any apps distributed via third-party app stores, so it’s risky to allow it.
Last year, Amazon tried to circumvent Google’s rules, and quietly put their app store into the main Amazon shopping app. In response, Google kicked it out of the Play Store. While the Amazon app eventually came back (without the app component), the Amazon app will now prompt you to download a version with their app store bundled in it. The company took a similar approach to distributing the Amazon Video app, when it finally arrived.
All of this is a mess for consumers, but technically it’s not really harmful. Each company has their reasons for doing what they do and it amounts to a mild inconvenience for customers, but it also enables healthy competition. It could be worse. And if you have a Chromecast, it is.
Why Amazon Video Still Doesn’t Support Chromecasting
Ever since its release, Chromecast users have lamented the lack of Amazon Video, which exists on many other platforms—including the Xbox, PlayStation, and Roku.
At first, it seemed like Amazon just wanted to push the Fire TV and its smaller cousin the Fire TV Stick. But today, Amazon took their war against the Chromecast a step further, announcing it will ban the sale of Chromecasts and Apple TVs. The reason, according to an official statement from Amazon, is that these devices don’t “interact well” with Prime Video:
Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Roku, XBOX, PlayStation and Fire TV are excellent choices.
This is absurd.
The only reason that Prime Video doesn’t exist on the Chromecast is because Amazon simply doesn’t want it to. To imply that the Chromecast “doesn’t interact well” with Prime Video is misleading at best. Chromecast would support Prime Video just fine...if Amazon wanted it to. Google allows any app developer to add Chromecast support to their iOS or Android app. There is no technical or policy limitation that prevents Prime Video from “interacting well” with the Chromecast. And Amazon has made no statement indicating why they refuse to support it (though we can hazard a guess.)
Furthermore, claiming customers would be “confused” by the Chromecast not supporting Prime—which it makes no claim to do—is hilarious. Why would anyone expect that every product sold at the biggest online retailer would also be compatible with their services? Amazon still sells PC games, and no one’s confused that they don’t install on the Kindle Fire.
Of course, corporate competition isn’t exactly new. You won’t find Android products in an Apple store, and Google’s not going to sell Fire TVs on the Google Store. But Amazon isn’t just a technology manufacturer—they want to be the Everything Store. You’re suppose to be able to buy almost anything on Amazon. So it’s incredibly suspicious that they would ban a product just because they chose not to make an app that supports it. This ban is a situation entirely of Amazon’s own making. Many Chromecast users (several Lifehacker staff included) have wanted to use Prime Video for years, but are unable to because Amazon doesn’t approve of our choice in streaming dongle. And this move today makes it clear that Amazon has no interest in supporting its customers by playing nice, if it means they don’t get to control what’s plugged into your TV.
Illustration by Jim Cooke.