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Google Television Businesses

How Google Kneecapped Amazon's Smart TV Efforts (protocol.com) 79

Posted by msmash from the my-way-or-highway dept.
Amazon has sold millions of Fire TV streaming devices in recent years, but its efforts to expand the Fire TV platform to smart TVs and cable set-top boxes have been slow-going. That's not by accident, according to industry insiders: They say Google has long prevented consumer electronics manufacturers from doing business with Amazon, reports news outlet Protocol. From the report: At the center of Google's efforts to block Amazon's smart TV ambitions is the Android Compatibility Commitment -- a confidential set of policies formerly known as the Anti-Fragmentation Agreement -- that manufacturers of Android devices have to agree to in order to get access to Google's Play Store. Google has been developing Android as an open-source operating system, while at the same time keeping much tighter control of what device manufacturers can do if they want access to the Play Store as well as the company's suite of apps. For Android TV, Google's apps include a highly customized launcher, or home screen, optimized for big-screen environments, as well as a TV version of its Play Store.

Google policies are meant to set a baseline for compatible Android devices and guarantee that apps developed for one Android device also work on another. The company also gives developers some latitude, allowing them to build their own versions of Android based on the operating system's open source code, as long as they follow Google's compatibility requirements. However, the Android Compatibility Commitment blocks manufacturers from building devices based on forked versions of Android, such as Fire TV OS, that are not compatible with the Google-sanctioned version of Android. This even applies across device categories, according to two sources: Manufacturers that have signed on to the Android Compatibility Commitment for their mobile phone business are effectively not allowed to build Fire TV devices.
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How Google Kneecapped Amazon's Smart TV Efforts More

How Google Kneecapped Amazon's Smart TV Efforts

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  • Even he understood the I-Ching was a valuable tool for divination. Why is it so hard for Westerners to accept this fact?
    • This article is horseshit. Amazon is at fault here. On an Android TV, you can get Netflix, AT&T TV, HBO, Hulu, etc... etc... etc ...

      If Amazon made Amazon TV an app along side all the others, problem solved. A streaming service DOES NOT warrant a forked OS. Sorry. It doesn't.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kalpol ( 714519 )
        walled gardens however, do. Amazon doesn't care about streaming. Amazon cares about protecting you from the evil outsiders that might give you a counterfeit experience.
        • If Google/Android give preferential treatment to google services then you can complain. If it treats other google competitors like Hulu Disney Netflix the same way it treats youtube yttv etc, then Amazon is at fault.

          Amazon is the one creating a walled garden in Fire TV, not google.

          • Didn't Amazon fire the first shot here? They tried to kill off Android TV AND Apple TV very early on. Android TV in particular because even though there already was a prime video app for Android, they specifically kept it away from Android TV as a first step, and then they banned any new market entrants that competed with firetv saying that any player that didn't include prime video was "confusing to customers". Nexus Player was doing pretty well until then. AppleTV was caught in that same dragnet, while Ro

        • Amazon cares about protecting you from the evil outsiders that might give you a counterfeit experience.

          Amazon doesn't care that much when you can find many counterfeit goods on their site.

          Amazon May Have a Counterfeit Problem [theatlantic.com]

          The company is facing multiple lawsuits from brands who say it does not do enough to prevent fakes from being listed on its website.

          A decade ago, when I was a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, I tagged along with Chris Johnson, an attorney representing True Religion jeans, as he searched for counterfeits in the stores of Santee Alley, Los Angeles’s hub for knockoffs. We’d g

  • Who to root for? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @12:40PM (#59818562)

    A couple of giants duke it out, and the little people scramble for cover.
    Hey, Google wrote it. if Amazon wants to make a play for their own exclusivity, they can write their own OS.

    • This is not your "democracy". ;)

      I say let's root for ourselves!

      Throw a rock at Google and make it look like it was Amazon. Throw a rock at Amazon, and make it look like it was Google. Sit back, grab some popcorn, relax, and watch the carnage. O:-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slaker ( 53818 )

      Functionally, they did. FireOS is more or less AOSP with Google's hooks replaced with Amazon hooks. It's generally functional but lacks some of the diversity of the Play Services Framework, and there's nothing really stopping anyone from adding that to FireOS devices anyway.

      Android TV and FireOS both have issues with software not working well with remotes or gamepads; some Android applications don't even work well with keyboard and mouse, but for the most part if you copy an APK from a phone or tablet, it'l

      • All those little media player devices are buggy, clunky, and slow down with software updates. I bought a used small form factor i5 box and use it with a wireless mouse. Works great and everything plays right from the browser. You can find the really tiny Lenovo i3 boxes for $60 and throw in a $20 SSD and have a pretty zippy Linux based media player.

        • That has not been my experience with the Roku players (well, the little roku nano ones are an exception) but my roku 3 has been working just fine for the past 8 years.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kalpol ( 714519 )
            Same here, the chubby little Roku 3 has been great (with a pihole on the network) with Plex and the normal apps. But I also have a Pi 3 running OSMC/Kodi which is really not bad, with a wireless keyboard remote. It plays a whole lot better with MythTV too.

        • Try shieldtv. Every Roku I've tried is slow as hell in comparison, and even the oldest shieldtv still gets updates, including major feature patches. There are YouTube videos that compare all of the set top players in terms of UI responsiveness, and shieldtv pretty consistently wins. Even modern game consoles, with all of their powerful hardware, are much slower. I rarely ever see any kind of bugs either, save for some CEC issues with a flaky Visio soundbar connected to one of my TVs, though it's entirely th

    • Re:Who to root for? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:26PM (#59818790)

      Hey, Google wrote it. if Amazon wants to make a play for their own exclusivity, they can write their own OS.

      The very principle being discussed here is that they can't. Amazon can't at the same time make a Google device and another device according to the agreement. Incidentally this is the reason Google got a $4bn fine in the EU. It's a textbook case of abuse of market power to stifle competition.

      • "Amazon can't at the same time make a Google device and another device according to the agreement. "

        I think it's more that 3rd-parties can't offer both AndroidTV- and FireTV -based devices.

        E.g. if you are Hisense and offer AndroidTV on one model of TV, you can't offer FireTV on a different model of TV.

        Ah well, guess I will just buy dumb TVs and a $35 Fire stick, oh wait, I have one of those already.

        • It's both. But yes the 3rd party problem is also an issue.

        • Ah well, guess I will just buy dumb TVs

          Well, good luck with that; everybody has jumped on the spy-on-you/show you ads "smart TV" bandwagon. Unless you're willing to pay 5 times the price for a commercial monitor, you won't find a dumb TV of a reasonable size/quality anymore.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by AK Marc ( 707885 )
            Odd. I was able to turn off the "smart" in my smart TV with ease. Simply set it to go into live TV on startup, and forget it. Only when you start in the native app does it have the ability to show an add. At least so far, smart TVs allow you to set them as TVs. Maybe some don't, or one day in the future they won't. But for now, they work as dumb monitors, if you spend 10 seconds reading the manual and setting them up correctly.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward
            my smart tv defaults to a generic hdmi input that speaks to my general purpose linux box. It's very dumb. What's the problem? sometimes I mistake the power button for some smart tv functionality so I have to switch inputs. Pretty much like any video monitor I've ever used in my life.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          Ah well, guess I will just buy dumb TVs and a $35 Fire stick, oh wait, I have one of those already.

          And lose features. A TV with built-in features has features that can't be replicated without thousands of dollars of gear. Want to picture-in-picture two HDMI sources? Nope. Your dumb TV can't do it. But the same two inputs can be PIPed if they can be run on the TV directly.

          Sure, the "but I don't want to do that" answer is understood. But just because you don't care doesn't mean nobody else does. And looking at the PIP options, they are expanding PIP with every generation, so maybe eventually they c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        That isn't true, at all.

        They are free to make it, they just can't base it on Android.

        The EU fine is misguided and frankly based on a series of fundamental misunderstanding of the technologies at play in the marketplace. Which isn't that surprising for a court or bureaucracy nowadays.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          They are free to make it, they just can't base it on Android.

          "You can't use our [app] if you don't use our [OS]." That's a classic and explicitly illegal anti-trust violation.

    • Bah, I was too busy watching Streaming TV on my Apple TV. Sure I paid 10x the amount for it. But it is mostly out of the Race to the Bottom war.

    • Google wrote it. But it still needs to treat all players the sameway and it can not give special preference to Google. If it does it would be another microsoft.

      But in this case Google/Android is playing fair. All competitors of Google streaming services like YouTube and YouTubeTV get the same treatment. There are other competitors like Hulu Netflix Disney etc they all play along fine with Google. They are not complaining of step motherly treatment.

      Amazon is trying to use its clout and bundled services to

  • Good (Score:3)

    by magarity ( 164372 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @12:42PM (#59818582)

    Amazon's Fire-tv/tablet/etc forks of Android are fighting hard with Apple / iOS for the title of most obsessively walled-garden ecosystem. Good riddance to not having it baked into a TV from a third party.

    • Re: Good (Score:4, Interesting)

      by buchanmilne ( 258619 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:54PM (#59818918) Homepage

      "Amazon's Fire-tv/tablet/etc forks of Android are fighting hard with Apple / iOS for the title of most obsessively walled-garden ecosystem."

      How did you arrive at this conclusion?

      You can side-load Google Play on Kindle Fire tablets (and then install anything you like) and you can side-load APKs on Fire TVs (I haven't tried Google Play, but I installed Kodi this way).

      This doesn't differ much from any other AOSP (not licensed for Google Play) version of Android.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AK Marc ( 707885 )

        You can side-load Google Play on Kindle Fire tablets

        You can, but Amazon can't. That's the issue.

        • You can side-load Google Play on Kindle Fire tablets

          You can, but Amazon can't. That's the issue.

          Agreed (see my other posts), but why is this a reason to say:

          Amazon's Fire-tv/tablet/etc forks of Android are fighting hard with Apple / iOS for the title of most obsessively walled-garden ecosystem.

          This is what I was responding to here ...

  • The interface is universally slow, hard to use with a remote, and usually insecure. Just use a god damn Fire stick / chromecast / roku / apple TV.

    You'll enjoy using that TV a lot more. Also just never plug in an ethernet cable into it either

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wiggles ( 30088 )

      My TV has a Roku built into it - I actually kinda like it.

      • Re:Smart TVs are awful (Score:4, Funny)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:30PM (#59818806)

        My TV has a Roku built into it - I actually kinda like it.

        Mine has Godzilla built in -- the interface is a bit temperamental, do not recommend.

        • Mine has a laser built in. Do not stare at it with your remaining eye.

          • Bah, I had the Killer TV and VCR combo for a long time. Its an evil television set with a round CRT with iron bars over the front, and spikes protruding out from all over the case.
            The VCR part does not take video tape, but instead uses instant NITRATE film to record programs, so I run the risk of being burnt to death in my sleep when I try to tape something overnight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jon3k ( 691256 )
        We had a TCL TV at the office that had the built in Roku stuff, it actually wasn't awful. Problem was you had to have a credit card to setup your TV. It was insane. But, the UI was snappy. The problem is that you cannot upgrade your Smart TV hardware, so in a couple years it'll be slower and slower. But if you get there you can always switch over to whatever the latest streaming dongle is at the time.

        • You can set up Roku without a credit card, but they make it hard to do on their website. If I remember correctly, just bail when it asks for the credit card, then log back in to the account, and it should let you add services. They want you to subscribe to other streaming services through THEIR portal, that's why they want the CC, but they don't seem to understand that most people have already subscribed to the services they want and just need to add the software to the device.

    • Is it like a PC monitor that is big but not in resolution nor image precision, and has a Smartphone pointlessly built in because at the processing power that modern video streams require, you need so much, you can aswell just throw in Android for marketing reasons?

      I've got a projector for that. Attached to my PC, wich I can control via KDEconnect or LIRC (over wifi) from my phone.
      And the wall is good enough.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You are poor. If you have a modern, quality TV, the interface is actually quite good.

  • amazon android products are already rolling their own app store. Why would this stop them?

  • They make it very easy to fork android but if you want to use google's garden and their playstore you have to play by their rules. There is nothing unreasonable about this. Android is Google's brand name and they work hard to maintain a certain level of quality. All the app developers write their apps assuming a specific environment. Google guarantees this for them and does some automated testing. They are not going to fragment their garden for Amazon. That would reduce its value. Don't like it, fork

    • They make it easy to fork android but if you do there is no guarantee that it will still be 100% compatible with the play store apps so you can't use it and give them a bad name when it doesn't work.

    • Uuum, monopolism is a crime.

      And lock-in is just localized monopolism.

      It is what ruins that free market that they always say that they love.

      • Amazon really should have written their own OS. Literally all of their consumer electronics products would have been better for it. It's not a monopoly abuse when Google doesn't let Amazon piggyback on all their hard work for free.

      • Uuum, monopolism is a crime.

        No, having a monopoly isn’t a crime. How the monopoly is being maintained might be a crime. The law allows for monopolies to exist. For example being the only grocery store in an area is not illegal especially if the area is remote or isolated. Google being the only company to approve apps for their own platform isn’t illegal in itself.

        If we look at the MS case, having Internet Explorer wasn’t the problem for MS. How they used their relationships to harm Netscape (a competitor) was the pro

      • Monopolies are not a crime.
        However the steps to become one often require illegal actions.
        As well if you are a Monopoly then the government is going to get involved into your business and every decision, because it is too much uncontrolled power.

    • Re:It is Google's garden (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:21PM (#59818758)

      There is nothing unreasonable about this.

      That's because you don't understand the issue. Not having Google Play services on your device is one thing, but that's not what is gimping the Fire TV. Google's practice of preventing manufacturers who signed up with Google from making products that work with other devices is most definitely anti-competitive and it is precisely this practice which netted them their record fine from the EU anti-trust regulator.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        But why would anyone want to make a fire TV device?

        It's just a gimped version of Android. Years behind on updates, limited to Amazon's marketplace.

        Why would anyone make one when they could make an Android device instead?

        • Why would anyone make one when they could make an Android device instead?

          "Why" is not relevant to the issue. Amazon have partners. Amazon can pay for content too. People do a lot of things that make no sense from the outside but behind the scenes are sound financial decisions.

          As for updates... that ship sailed years ago. Most people couldn't give a crap about what OS version they run. Hell I'm willing to bet you yourself couldn't tell us what features were introduced in Android 10 over Android 9 without looking it up, or which 3rd party versions of official Android already had t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )

          But why would anyone want to make a fire TV device? It's just a gimped version of Android.

          So, because Google attacked it and gimped it, it's gimped and nobody should use it.

          #Running smack into the point face-first but missing it anyway

        • You're comment doesn't make sense; you're basically asking "why make an Android device, when they can just make an Android device?" Fire TV is Android based. Also, no-one else can make a just-Android based device without google services. The licensing agreements Google has for the Google play store and other Google specific products means they can't make a product without all of the Google spy-ware. There are several forks of Android for phones, like Lineage, that will never be sold along side the same

    • Fuck Google's garden. I should put a goose in it.

    • Don't like it, fork it and write your own apps or create your own app distribution platform and convince developers to use it.

      The problem here is that it isn't just the distribution platform. Google has tied much of Androids functionality to what they call Play Services which is not part of AOSP. This means if a developer chooses to use functionality that resides in Play Services these apps will not work on a FireOS device unless Play Services has been sideloaded. Google is making Sideloading these services increasingly difficult. And while Google is free to do this they should also be compelled to make this clear to any developer

  • No we only need to make Amazon (look like they) retailate massively. And we got these two cunts bashing at each other at our glee, until they are fucking dead and we can reap the wasteland and sow some honest fucking sanity and niceness over the former Lovecraftian Superfund sites.

    Sorry for my French. I just watched Zero Punctuation, and it seems fitting.

  • Just plug in AppleTV/firestick/chromecast to your regular TV. Why would you spend extra for something that could be incompatible/slow/etc.? Anytime I'm at someones house with a 'smart TV', I'm amazed at how much slower and clunkier the built in interface is vs. a stand alone device.

    • Just plug in AppleTV/firestick/chromecast to your regular TV.

      Is there such a thing as a "regular TV" anymore? But yeah, this is good advice. We have a so-called "smart TV" - but it's off the internet, and almost everything we watch is via the Apple TV plugged into it (my wife still watches a couple network shows which we record on a TiVo).

      Thing is, despite what LG, Sony, etc. want... the vast majority of people still hang onto their TVs for as long as they function. But the manufacturers only update the "smart" part of their smart TVs for three or four years, at best

      • There is no such thing as a "dumb" tv unless you want a studio grade model that costs $3k.

        • ...or this one for $90 that was literally the first one to pop up when I searched Best Buy:

          https://www.insigniaproducts.com/pdp/NS-32D220NA18/5747454

          There are LOTS of non-smart TVs out there.

  • I'm not a fan of android but if you are going to fork android or make changes it has to be changes that won't break regular android apps in the google play store or why would google consider letting you have access to it.

    • Re:I don't see a problem.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:25PM (#59818786)

      That's not the problem here, read the last line of the summary. It's not an issue of access to Google Play, it's an issue that manufacturers who do have access to Google Play do so under the condition that they don't also use something like the Fire TV. It's anti-competitive and precisely this practice that got them their record fine by the EU anti-trust regulator.

      You can deny an app access to Google Play. You can deny a device access to Google Play. You can't deny someone who makes an app or device which is compatible with Google Play from also using an Android Fork.

      • You might think that is a little shady and it might be if manufactures are required to sign the compatibility commitment in order to use android although you can't have it both ways either android apps are universally compatible or they aren't. Take your pick because google already did, the other option is that there bunch of flavors of android and apps have to target each fork to be compatible.

        Amazon clearly states that Fire OS is a fork of android and that your android apps may be compatible or require a

  • There's another factor... Roku is simply better. I've ended up with two Roku TVs now (I didn't choose them specifically because they had Roku built in), and I have to admit that I've been pleasantly happy. We also have a number of Amazon Fire Sticks, and they are nearly garbage. They are slow, clunky, the remote sucks compared to Roku, the interface is simultaneously complex and confusing, and worst of all, I've had multiple occasions on which it decided to do some kind of update, or it was running out of

  • every company that sticks it to amazon i will cheer them fir it.

    • Got a 42" 4K FireTV around Christmas Time for $160.
      Very nice picture. Weighs next to nothing. Imperfect, highly cluttered interface.
      But oddly satisfying getting a shell from my TV and having my way with it.

  • Google got fined for this practice (Score:5, Informative)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday March 11, 2020 @01:28PM (#59818798)

    Worth remembering is that last line of the summary. Google's contractual requirements that manufacturers who are part of the Android Compatibility Commitment not *also* produce a device on a forked version of Android was one of the 3 findings which netted Google a lovely 4.34bn EUR fine. https://ec.europa.eu/commissio... [europa.eu]

  • It's long past time we started using it.

    • They did use it. In the EU, Google got fined billions. In the USA anti-trust has a far higher bar that relies on actionable evidence that consumers were harmed.

  • Google has been developing Android as an open-source operating system, while at the same time keeping much tighter control of what device manufacturers can do if they want access to the Play Store as well as the company's suite of apps. For Android TV, Google's apps include a highly customized launcher, or home screen, optimized for big-screen environments, as well as a TV version of its Play Store. ... However, the Android Compatibility Commitment blocks manufacturers from building devices based on forked versions of Android, such as Fire TV OS, that are not compatible with the Google-sanctioned version of Android. This even applies across device categories, according to two sources: Manufacturers that have signed on to the Android Compatibility Commitment for their mobile phone business are effectively not allowed to build Fire TV devices.

    So Android is basically an anti competitive walled garden. Fancy that...

  • I don't really understand this article, because I see plenty of so-called "Smart" TVs with FireTV support at the local electronics store. While it's not say on a Sony or LG TV, I know Toshiba makes some, and I think TCL has some as well. I'm guessing more at Walmart by those Chinese companies that own brands like RCA and such too where they can't do Google anyways.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      The companies who make those TVs like Toshiba and TCL are not making devices running Google's flavor of Android and hence aren't subject to the same restrictions Google has placed on companies like LG and Samsung.

  • "Google policies are meant to set a baseline for compatible Android devices and guarantee that apps developed for one Android device also work on another. " Why are Smart TV apps removed remotely by 'someone besides owner' with claim "This older version is no longer supported"?!! Ahrg! Apps Removed from Smart TV that completely defeat the purpose/benefit of a SmartTV: YouTube multiple yoga apps Amazon Video Amazon Prime Video Weather Report Web Browser Adobe Flash and many others Should not have to purc
  • if Amazon dont build android to specifications that satisfies google then google should not have any obligation to allow amazon access to google playstore, let amazon support their own fork of android, why should google support other people's open source projects, same with Samsung, i know google playstore is in my samsung phone but i also read recently google scolded samsung for some bad practices in how samsung builds the android kernel & OS, and if google pulls the plug on playstore for samsungs prod

  • monopoly /mnäpl/
    noun
    1. the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
    "Google's likely motive was to protect its global monopoly on android devices."

  • Microsoft in the 80s and 90s. Pretty impressive how they've sacrificed the whole "Don't be evil" idealism at the altar of revenue generation while still getting a large percentage of the population to feed them personal data.

  • Did you hear about the monkeys who shared an Amazon account? They were Prime mates.

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