Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
This is truly worth a bit of celebration! With Google and Amazon fighting like children for years over streaming services and hardware, we are finally at the end of the longstanding dispute and are getting not one, but two major shifts in the Google/Amazon video delivery services.
Chromecast Support For Prime
For me, the most important of these announcements is the addition of Chromecast support on Amazon Prime Videos. It is no secret that Amazon’s video service is top-notch and contains content that is both desirable and unique. The biggest kicker with Prime Video is the fact that it is available to all Prime members with no additional fees or requirements.
I can’t tell you the number of shows on Amazon Prime that I’ve skipped because our primary mode of video consumption is a TV and Chromecast combo. I watched a few episodes casting my entire screen from my phone or plugging a Chromebook in via HDMI, but those aren’t really solutions at all. I’ve bemoaned the lack of Chromecast support for Amazon Prime for years and now, it seems, I’m finally getting my wish.
In addition to the Chromecast addition, Prime Videos will also be arriving on all Android TV devices instead of just the small handful of devices that run the app at this point.
YouTube Comes Back
The second part of this announcement is the fact that YouTube will finally be making a return to Amazon Fire TV products. YouTube has been painfully absent from Amazon’s well-made streaming hardware for quite some time now and it’s been unfortunate for users across the board. Between Google pulling YouTube from Fire TV and Amazon pulling sales of Chromecast off their store, the somewhat-childish moves have simply been exhausting and have hurt no one other than the consumers.
Along with YouTube returning to Fire TV, YouTube Kids and YouTube TV will also become widely available on Fire TV devices later this year. You can read the entire press release here, but the moral of the story is this: the feud is finally over! Content is become re-democratized and regardless of your hardware preference or streaming service of choice, you won’t have goofy restrictions on either one.
With Apple’s latest move to allow Apple Music on Chromebooks (not just Android Phones) and adding Chromecast support, it is feeling like the industry as a whole is moving more towards the middle and pulling down the walled gardens that once dominated content delivery. For you, me, and anyone else on the internet, this is big news and a very, very good thing.
