The Amazon Prime Day celebration isn’t just about low prices—starting today, YouTube will finally be available to watch on Amazon Fire TV devices, marking a serious thaw in the cold war between Google and Amazon over competing devices and streaming services.
Prime Video will also be available for streaming to Google Chromecast and Chromecast Ultra dongles and Android TV sets and boxes, and YouTube Kids and YouTube TV will make their way to Amazon devices later this year. Google pulled the YouTube app in December 2017 after Amazon refused to sell Google and Nest products on its site. Amazon has since begun selling Nest products but has yet to add Google Home speakers.
Google says the official YouTube app will be available worldwide on the following devices: Fire TV Stick (2nd Gen), Fire TV Stick 4K, Fire TV Cube, Fire TV Stick Basic Edition, and Toshiba, Insignia, Element, and Westinghouse Fire TV Edition smart TVs. There’s no mention of the Echo Show or Spot, however, which remain unable to play videos through a native YouTube player. Users of those devices need to use the Firefox browser to access YouTube videos, which is less than ideal.
Phones or tablets streaming Prime Video to Chromecast will need to be running Android 5.0 or higher or iOS 10.1 or higher to receive the update.