It’s January 2018, which means you already need to fix a major tech problem, one that you knew was coming.
Google announced about a month ago that it would cut YouTube access on January 1st on Amazon devices that can play YouTube videos, including Amazon Echo and Fire TV. Luckily, there’s a fix for that.
“We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services,” Google said in a statement in early December.
“But Amazon doesn’t carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn’t make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest’s latest products. Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and FireTV. We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon.”
Amazon wasn’t that happy at the time. ““Echo Show and Fire TV now display a standard web view of YouTube.com and point customers directly to YouTube’s existing website,” a spokesperson said in response to Google’s remarks. “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website. We hope to resolve this with Google as soon as possible.”
That doesn’t mean you can’t play YouTube videos on your Amazon device now that standalone app doesn’t work. Just go to the Silk or Firefox browsers, and load the YouTube app. Voila! All is good in the world.
This isn’t a full fix, as it requires an extra step. But the videos you want to play are all there waiting.
It’s likely that Google and Amazon will come to terms in the future. After all, Amazon has started selling the Chromecast online since early December — and the
Read this Reddit thread if you want to see what other affected people are saying about the whole matter.
