After Amazon and Google buried the hatchet earlier this spring in their multiyear streaming-video spat, the companies have now made their devices and services work together.
The official YouTube app for Amazon’s Fire TV devices is available starting Tuesday (July 9) worldwide — a year and a half after Google pulled YouTube from the Fire TV platform. In addition, Amazon Prime Video is now available on Google’s Chromecast and will come to more Android TV devices as well.
The détente between the two tech heavyweights came after years of negotiations and public bickering. The ill-will started four years ago, after Amazon dropped Chromecast devices from its store, citing the fact that Amazon’s video services weren’t available on the device. Amazon resumed selling the Chromecast adapters in December 2018.
YouTube’s app is fully integrated on the Fire TV lineup of products, including voice control via Alexa. That lets you issue spoken commands like, “Alexa, watch music videos on YouTube” to open the app and immediately start playing the top result.
Not available yet on Fire TV are the YouTube TV and YouTube Kids apps, which the companies say will launch later this year. Currently, the official YouTube app is available worldwide on Fire TV Stick (second generation), Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick Basic Edition, and Toshiba, Insignia, Element, and Westinghouse Fire TV Edition smart TVs.
To access Prime Video on Chromecast, users will need to have the most recent Prime Video app and Android 5.0 or higher or iOS 10.1 or higher on their phones or tablets. In addition, users with Chromecast Ultra (which supports Ultra HD and HDR formats) will have access to 4,000 titles included with Prime at no additional cost.
For now, select Android TV devices have access to Prime Video, accessible by clicking the app icon directly from the home screen or in Google Play. Google said additional Android TV smart TVs, set-top boxes and streaming devices will also soon have Prime Video.