Bad news for cord cutters: In a move that echoes contract spats between television networks and cable providers, Google LLC has announced that it will drop YouTube support for Amazon.com Inc.’s Fire TV and Echo Show media devices starting Jan. 1.

Google had already pulled YouTube from Echo Show in September, saying in a statement that “Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience.” Google added that it was working with Amazon to resolve the issue, but it did not elaborate on what changes it wanted Amazon to make to the Echo Show YouTube app.

Amazon claimed at the time that Google’s decision to pull YouTube from Echo Show came “without explanation and without notification to customers.”

YouTube finally reappeared on Echo Show in November, seemingly signaling that Google and Amazon had reached an agreement. But the app was actually a workaround created by Amazon that redirected users to the web version of YouTube.

Google has now blocked access for that version as well, and the company will soon pull support for the much more popular Fire TV, Amazon’s streaming media player. An Amazon spokesperson commented that “Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website.”

Meanwhile, a Google spokesperson revealed in a new statement that the spat with Amazon is about more than fixing a “broken user experience” on Amazon devices. Google’s spokesperson said:

We’ve been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other’s products and services, 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.

The loss of YouTube could deal a major blow to Amazon’s streaming devices, and many users had already flooded the Echo Show store page with negative reviews when it first lost access in September. Similar reviews are also now hitting the Fire TV store page, with one reviewer saying, “[YouTube] was my main selling point, and I am furious that they are getting rid of it. Do yourself a favor and just go with Apple TV!”

“A better strategy would be giving access to YouTube to AMZN-Alexa users and charging them a subscription fee,” Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, wrote today in a note to clients.

Goodbye Google, hello Apple

Amazon’s relationship with Google may have soured, but the ecommerce giant seems to have found a new friend in Apple Inc. Amazon announced today that the Amazon Prime Video app is now available on Apple TV devices in more than 100 countries. Previously, Apple TV owners would need to stream Prime Video from a separate device, such as Amazon’s Fire TV.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook first announced Prime Video support for Apple TV at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in June, but the app’s release had been delayed for unknown reasons. Mark Eamer, vice president of Prime Video, said in a statement today that Amazon is “thrilled” finally to have the app on Apple TV.

Although Amazon and Apple seem to be getting along, many of the same complaints Google made against Amazon hold true for Apple as well. For example, Amazon does not sell Apple TV in its store, nor does it plan to sell Apple HomePod, Apple’s coming smart speaker competitor to Amazon Echo.

Photo: Amazon