It’s been several months since Roku and YouTube TV reached a cease-fire in their dispute over … well, over a few things. But it now looks like the war is heating back up.
To recap, Roku in April 2021 first announced that negotiations that would extend YouTube TV’s availability on the Roku platform had broken down. In doing so, it said that “Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users.” Exactly what those disputed terms are has been a little ambiguous. Roku has said it has to do with search results. Google calls any allegations baseless.
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And today, in a rather long blog post for this sort of thing, Roku has renewed its complaints while shining a little more light on the conflict. That light, no doubt, is tinted in Roku’s distinct purple color, but there’s a good bit to glean here.
First is that it’s pretty obvious that no deal has been reached that would allow YouTube TV back onto the Roku platform like any other streaming service. Currently, those who already had YouTube TV installed could keep using it. Google rigged up a workaround by which the YouTube TV experience can be launched from within the YouTube channel itself, but that’s not really ideal for anyone. And that was a bold move, all but daring Roku to shut down the world’s default streaming video service on its platform. (YouTube TV is only available in the U.S,, and in October 2020 announced that it had more than 3 million subscribers.)
Roku tips its hand a little with the following:
Content available on our platform includes TV streaming services that are owned and operated by some of the most powerful tech companies in the world who also sell their own competing streaming devices.
Read between those lines, and you get a sense that Roku is worried not just about the $50 Chromecast with Google TV — which directly competes with the likes of the Roku Streaming Stick 4K, as well as with other low-cost televisions that use the Roku operating system.
Roku flat-out says that “our concerns with Google are not about money.” Perhaps all this really is about principle, but it’s hard to believe that someone actually wrote that line with a straight face. Roku goes on to say that “We have not asked for a single change in the financial terms of our existing agreement. In fact, Roku does not earn a single dollar from YouTube’s ad-supported video sharing service today, whereas Google makes hundreds of millions of dollars from the YouTube app on Roku.”
That’s conflating a few things that are related but not the same. YouTube is not YouTube TV, even though those lines certainly are more blurry than any of the other live TV streaming services, like Hulu or Sling TV. What Roku doesn’t say is whether the concern is over any sort of fees it might be demanding over the advertising shown on YouTube TV. Perhaps YouTube TV doesn’t want to pay as high a rate as it’s currently paying, thus the impasse.
Roku does lay out things fairly succinctly, though not necessarily with any great fidelity:
There are two primary concerns we are working to address: First, Google continues to interfere with Roku’s independent search results, requiring that we preference YouTube over other content providers. This is a concern shared by many companies who believe that customers deserve neutral and relevant results to their search queries. Second, Google discriminates against Roku by demanding search, voice, and data features that they do not insist on from other streaming platforms.
What that has to do with YouTube TV isn’t exactly clear. Nor does it mean that Roku and YouTube and YouTube TV and Google (and Alphabet, we suppose, which is the parent company for the latter three) can’t reach some sort of deal by what Deadline has said is a December 9 deadline, at which point new Roku users would be unable to download YouTube apps. (There’s precedent for that, by the way — Amazon Fire TV went a long time without a proper YouTube app.)
What is YouTube Music? Everything you need to know
YouTube is one of the most popular online destinations for video, but it's also one of the premier places in the world to find music. It's no surprise, then, that Google went and rolled all that music content out into a dedicated music app called YouTube Music. The app offers music and podcasts and has free and premium versions.
If you're wondering how YouTube Music compares to other music streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, or Apple Music, it really depends on how frequently you rely on YouTube to search for music and how important music videos are to you. In this article, we'll give you all the information you need to make an informed decision.
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YouTube TV just got even better on iPhones and iPads
If you use the most popular live-streaming service on an iPhone or iPad, things just got even better. YouTube TV — which boasts more than 8 million subscribers — just pushed multiview live on Apple's mobile devices, as previously promised.
It works basically the same way it does on a television. YouTube TV picks the programs available in multiview, and you get them all at once, with audio coming from one of the shows. Tap another, and the audio switches. And just as before, you can get multiview for sports, news, business, or weather. (Though we definitely don't recommend watching four news channels at once in an election year.) It's just in time for March Madness, which is great, though we hope you'll be able to pick your own games instead of just sticking with the multiple viewing options YouTube TV gives. This will be great come fall, though, when the new season of NFL Sunday Ticket takes hold.
YouTube tells creators to start labeling ‘realistic’ AI content
YouTube is taking steps to try to help viewers better understand if what they’re watching has been created, whether completely or in part, by generative AI.
“Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves -- from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process,” YouTube said in a message shared on Monday. “But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.”
