Google and Amazon are known to not do each other any favors. With Amazon’s no-holds-barred push into the streaming and connected home arena, the massive online retailer has systematically eliminated a number of Google products from their site. Google Home and Chromecasts find themselves in direct contention with Amazon’s Echo lineup and Fire TV devices.
Google, in turn, has recently blocked access to YouTube on Amazon’s touchscreen Echo Show. At the end of the day, the rivalry is blown a bit more out of proportion than it should be. Google and Amazon are both giants competing in now similar arenas. Making it easy for the other guy in the world of tech isn’t smart business.
Sure, I’d love to see more Google’s products make their way to Amazon but seriously, you can find them just about anywhere else. So, it’s really a moot point.
However, one thing that Amazon has been sorely lacking on their part is Chromecast support for applications like Amazon Music and Prime Video. I get the rivalry between the two companies but with Google’s seemingly endless reach of the Chromecast platform (including thousands of Cast-enabled devices sold on Amazon) Amazon is seriously nerfing their product and likely turning off a large number of potential customers.
I’m an Amazon Prime member. I have access to a huge library of video content from Amazon. I never use the Prime Video service. Maybe it’s smug on my part but if I can’t open my phone and cast directly from the app, I’m probably not going to use your service.
In a bit of an unexpected update, the Amazon Music app has quietly added Chromecast support allowing users to now cast all their Amazon music content to their favorite Chromecast device.
Not really sure what Amazon is up to here but hopefully they just came to the realization that Chromecast is everywhere and that they’re just shooting themselves in the foot by not taking advantage of that fact. With any luck, they will see a spike in the usage of the service and go ahead and bring Chromecast support to the Prime Movies app.
At that point, I can say I will at least give it a try. Competition is good and rivalries keep the market moving but there’s no reason these two tech giants can’t play nice to the benefit of everyone.
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Source: Android Police
