Skip to main content

Amazon: Google won’t tell us why it pulled YouTube from the Echo Show

Amazon: Google won’t tell us why it pulled YouTube from the Echo Show

/

‘Just tell us where we weren’t compliant,’ Amazon’s devices chief says

Share this story

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google won’t tell Amazon why it blocked access to YouTube on its Echo Show device, Amazon’s senior vice president of devices and services said. Speaking to reporters at Amazon’s headquarters today, longtime Amazon exec Dave Limp said he would “send a team to Mountain View” tonight if Google would just specify what went wrong.

“It was a surprise to us,” Limp said, following an event in which Amazon introduced a series of new devices, including new iterations of the Echo. “We don’t love it, on behalf of customers. We think a lot of customers were using YouTube on the Echo Show and liked it. What I’ve said to Google is: just tell us where we weren’t compliant with the API and we’ll send a team down to Mountain View tomorrow. I’ll send one tonight! And we’ll get the product back in line. They just haven’t told us what’s wrong with it. We’re committed to fixing it.”

Google blocked access to YouTube on the Show at 3PM yesterday. If you ask the smart speaker to show a YouTube video, Alexa says: “Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show.” Yesterday, Google implied that Amazon had violated some aspect of the YouTube API. “Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience,” the company said in a statement.

When reached for comment, Google referred us to its statement yesterday.

Lauren Goode contributed to this report.