
Amazon Will Resume Selling Apple TV, Google's Chromecast - yskchu
https://www.axios.com/amazon-will-resume-selling-apple-tv-googles-chromecast-2517483540.html
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ballade
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised that there are no laws in place in the U.S.,
even with them being hardcore capitalists, to prevent such a huge monopoly to
choose what they don't want to sell on their marketplace simply because in the
past few years they've decided to produce products that compete with Apple and
Google.

Bezos' goal from 1997 was to be the 'everything store' as it's succinctly put
in the biography about Amazon's rise, and they're doing a fine job of that. I
have friends and family that purchase just about everything short of groceries
on amazon. But what happens when they decide to enter more markets with their
own products and cut off other competitors from selling who don't have the
clout or leverage of a behemoth like Apple or Google? If Google had not pulled
YouTube from their Fire devices it's unlikely they would have let them sell
their products once again. Which shouldn't have even had to happen in the
first place.

Also, I think this was only in the US because I was checking Amazon UK last
week and you were still able to buy chromecasts and Google Home. This is
probably because the EU has laws that restricts companies from taking
advantage of their monopolised position and pushing competitors out.

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jimmywanger
Amazon does something even more insidious. Apparently if you're selling a
cable or something and doing really well, Amazon will come out with a generic
version of that which is cheaper, and they will be able to undercut your
prices.

Basically, they're letting you validate the market and then jumping in once
you've taken the risk and created the market.

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JonathonW
This is pretty common in retail and predates Amazon (or even online shopping
in general)-- for example, Kroger has Kroger-branded groceries; Best Buy has
Dynex, Rocketfish, and Insignia for consumer electronics; Costco has Kirkland
Signature everything.

Generics and private label brands are big business, especially in industries
where consumers aren't brand sensitive (does anyone actually buy on-brand
Motrin or Advil?). It's completely understandable that Amazon would want on
that particular gravy train.

~~~
reaperducer
Amazon Basics rechargeable batteries actually have higher capacities than
their name-brand competitors.

I saw Amazon Basics pants last night. But there's some places even I won't go.

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bitmapbrother
Search for a Chromecast device on Amazon and you'll be greeted with pages and
pages of Chinese Chromecast v1 and v2 lookalikes that have no Chromecast
functionality. It's absolutely ridiculous that Amazon supports and profits
from these types of third party sellers.

[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=chromecast)

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automoton1
If they did this to Apple and Google, what prevents them from doing it to
smaller companies that make similar products? How is this not anticompetitive?

~~~
calciphus
This isn't anti-competitive because you're not required to sell your
competitors products. I can't fathom requiring the Apple store to carry Amazon
Fire Tablets and Android phones.

~~~
izacus
Why can't you fanthom that? If Apple would control Amazon level of commerce in
field of electronics, not carrying them would mean that there's no more free
market and no competition in the field. Any new (or existing) player couldn't
enter the market no matter how good their product is.

The result is pretty much stores as they were here in the 1980s socialism -
filled with a single crappy product with no other choice. Let's not have that.

~~~
echosmith
"not carrying them would mean that there's no more free market and no
competition in the field. Any new (or existing) player couldn't enter the
market no matter how good their product is."

Um, go to the Apple website and order it or Walmart.com/Jet.com? If Amazon
started purchasing or shutting down all other retailers, then it would be a
monopoly. Simply being more successful than them doesn't make it so.

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kuschku
So, will Google in return allow Amazon (and maybe also others) to stream to
Chromecasts from Android devices without Google Play Services?

Will they maybe even open up the API?

I doubt it.

Chromecast still has only a single server implementation, which is
proprietary, and either a single proprietary client implementation, or
potentially two proprietary ones (in case Amazon has reverse engineered
Google's Chromecast client for the Chromecast support in the Prime Music app,
I haven't verified that yet)

~~~
izacus
Amazon Music just added Cast support and Google never blocked that.

I don't understand your point about proprietary APIs though - will Amazon now
also allow Google to replace firmware on FireTV sticks? ;)

~~~
kuschku
You can only cast to Chromecast by using Google's proprietary API, with
Google's proprietary library.

This only works on devices with Google Play services. On desktop, or on
Replicant, LineageOS, CopperheadOS, or _Kindle OS_ , it doesn't work at all.

This is important, especially the last part.

The company at fault for missing Chromecast support in anything is always
Google, because they chose not to make it an open standard, and because they
chose to rapidly, sometimes even weekly, change the already obfuscated
protocol, to prevent Amazon — and open source devs — from supporting it.

I spent hours every week updating my reverse engineered library to connect to
it, but in the end, I gave up. Now I have a very expensive brick here.

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jerrybigsock
Do we think this might be a result of Amazon's smart TV device not selling as
well as google/apple's?

~~~
richman777
I'm pretty sure this is directly in response to them pulling the Youtube App
from the FireTV devices.

~~~
jamiethompson
Yes, hopefully this won't now happen.

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jamiethompson
Hopefully this means I'm not going to have to explain to my kids why Youtube
doesn't work on the TV anymore at the end of this month.

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gwbas1c
I wonder if Amazon realized that Google and Apple can block their app?

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GeekyBear
You can't say that Amazon dominates retail to the extent that Youtube
dominates internet video, but there have been a few occasions where Google has
kept it's dominant Youtube video off of platforms that Google competes
against.

Windows Phone, Echo Show, and Fire TV come to mind.

Is Youtube's share of the online video market large enough that this pattern
of behavior would trigger antitrust concerns in the US?

How about under the EU's competition law, which kicks in at a much lower
threshold? Would Amazon and Youtube both have a large enough market share to
get them into legal hot water for anti-competitive behavior in the EU?

~~~
hb3b
That's right and I can't believe there isn't more disgust at Google for the
Echo Show drama. They blocked Youtube.com on this device -- the website, not
an app. It's the most recent example of throwing net neutrality out the
window.

~~~
wtallis
> It's the most recent example of throwing net neutrality out the window.

Net neutrality is about the middlemen in the network, not the endpoints. You
can't just point to every unfair or unethical business practice related to the
Internet and call it a net neutrality violation. Net neutrality has a more
specific meaning than that.

