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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 05 2018, @07:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the empty-nesters dept.

Amazon will stop selling Nest products once its current stock of them runs out:

The impending disappearance of Nest from Amazon marks just the latest development in the acrimonious, anti-consumer feud between Amazon and Google. Nest was absorbed back into Google last month after spending three years as a standalone Alphabet subsidiary. (Google tipped off Nest that Amazon had decided against selling its latest hardware while the companies were still separate.) Amazon has steadfastly refused to sell some Google-branded products like the Google Home voice assistant speaker and the company's Pixel smartphones. In December, the online retailer said it would restart sales of the Chromecast streaming device, but it's been three months and you still can't buy it. Last summer, Amazon launched a Prime Video app for Android, but has yet to add support for streaming its content with a Chromecast.

For its part in this ugly falling out, Google has removed YouTube from Amazon's Fire TV streaming products and the Echo Show / Spot, claiming that Amazon has violated its terms of service with those implementations of the YouTube app. There were once signs that the companies were mending the scorched bridge between them, but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer.

Related:
Amazon Declares War on YouTube by Launching Amazon Video Direct
Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show
Google's "Manhattan" to Compete With Amazon's Echo Show
Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home
Google Pulls YouTube Off of More Amazon Devices
Google Absorbs Nest, Nest Co-Founder Quits
Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Internet-Connected Doorbells and Cameras, for Over $1 Billion


Original Submission

Related Stories

Amazon Declares War on YouTube by Launching Amazon Video Direct 29 comments

Amazon unveiled a service that allows users to post videos and earn royalties from them, putting a big bulls eye on Alphabet's YouTube.

The service, called Amazon Video Direct, will make the uploaded videos available to rent or own, to view free with ads, or be packaged together and offered as an add-on subscription.

Amazon will pay content creators 50% of the revenue earned from rental receipts or sale of the videos, according to the company's license agreement. For ad-supported videos, the creators will get half of the net ad receipts.

Amazon's fast-growing Prime loyalty program already offers original TV programming and access to digital entertainment products such as Prime Music and Prime Video, as well as one-hour delivery of purchases, for an annual fee of $99.

YouTube offers a free, ad-supported service as well as a $10-per-month subscription option called YouTube Red. Amazon, though, has a long way to go to catch up with YouTube, the go-to venue for video on the internet since 2005.

Users of Amazon's service will be able to make their videos available in the US, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom. and Japan. The company has also signed up several partners for the service, including Conde Nast, the Guardian, Mashable and toymaker Mattel.

Amazon can throw a lot of money behind their new Video Direct service, but I don't know how well it will do. YouTube is pretty well thoroughly entrenched in the online video space.


Original Submission

Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show 15 comments

The Amazon Echo Show is an Alexa-powered voice assistant product that includes a touchscreen and a camera. Google has pulled support for YouTube on the device:

Google's popular video-sharing site appears to have disappeared from Amazon's device due to a dispute over how YouTube should work on the Echo Show. According to Amazon, Google pulled support for YouTube on the Echo Show on Tuesday afternoon:

Google made a change today at around 3 pm. YouTube used to be available to our shared customers on Echo Show. As of this afternoon, Google has chosen to no longer make YouTube available on Echo Show, without explanation and without notification to customers. There is no technical reason for that decision, which is disappointing and hurts both of our customers.

But Google accused Amazon of breaking its rules on the way YouTube is presented, adding that talks between the two companies haven't yielded a solution.

We've been in negotiations with Amazon for a long time, working towards an agreement that provides great experiences for customers on both platforms. Amazon's implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon.

The move is likely related to YouTube functionality desktop users are used [to] that is lacking from the Echo Show, including being able to share, recommend and comment on videos.

Also at The Verge.


Original Submission

Google's "Manhattan" to Compete With Amazon's Echo Show 11 comments

Google's 'Manhattan project': Home device with a screen to compete with Echo Show

Google generally doesn't do as well when it builds "follower" products — think Google Plus or Allo. But there are other examples where Google has excelled with later entries (e.g., AdWords, Maps). Right now, Google Home is a follower product seeking to break out of Amazon Echo's shadow.

[...] Amazon now has two devices with screens: Echo Show and the new Echo Spot. According to TechCrunch, Google is also working on a Home device with a touchscreen:

Two sources confirm to TechCrunch that the Google device has been internally codenamed "Manhattan" and will have a similar screen size to the 7-inch Echo Show. One source received info directly from a Google employee. Both sources say the device will offer YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Photos and video calling. It will also act as a smart hub that can control Nest and other smart home devices.

Previously: Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show


Original Submission

Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home 41 comments

Hot on the heels of Walmart's plans to deliver groceries directly into the fridges of homes with smart locks, Amazon has announced a similar arrangement for package deliveries, called Amazon Key:

Amazon on Wednesday announced Amazon Key, a new program for Prime members that lets delivery people drop off packages inside of customer homes.

To make Amazon Key possible, Amazon has introduced its own $120 internet-connected security camera called Amazon Cloud Cam. Customers who want to participate in the program need to purchase an accompanying "smart" lock to allow delivery people to enter their home. Combined camera-lock packages start at $250.

With the program Amazon is adding what it thinks is a more convenient option than traditional outside drop-off, while also coming up with one solution to package theft which is rampant in some markets.

The obvious questions are whether people will trust a delivery person to enter their home unattended. Amazon is trying to assuage these fears by alerting customers when a delivery is about to happen to allow them to watch it live via their phone.

This really isn't a big deal. They were delivering to the doorstep previously, and now they want to move the delivery by a couple of feet. There's almost no difference.

Also at The Verge.

Previously: Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases to Your Car Trunk


Original Submission

Google Pulls YouTube Off of More Amazon Devices 43 comments

Google pulls YouTube from Amazon devices, escalating spat

A rare public spat in the technology industry escalated on Tuesday when Google said it would block its video streaming application YouTube from two Amazon.com Inc devices and criticized the online retailer for not selling Google hardware.

[...] In a statement, Google said, "Amazon doesn't carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn't make (its) Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of (our sister company) Nest's latest products. "Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV," Google said. "We hope we can reach an agreement to resolve these issues soon."

[...] Amazon said in a statement, "Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website." It said it hoped to resolve the issue with Google as soon as possible but customers could access YouTube through the internet - not an app - on the devices in the meantime.

Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video has come to the Apple TV.

Also at The Verge and Variety.

Previously: Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show
Google's "Manhattan" to Compete With Amazon's Echo Show


Original Submission

Google Absorbs Nest, Nest Co-Founder Quits 9 comments

After buying Nest, keeping it as an independent company, and considering selling it off, Alphabet/Google is now rolling Nest back into itself. Nest makes various home automation products including a "smart thermostat", security systems, and video doorbells:

Some early employees of Alphabet's smart-home company Nest, including co-founder Tony Fadell, are frustrated by how the company's history has played out now that it has been rolled back into Google.

Google bought Nest for $3.2 billion in early 2014, less than two years before it blew up its corporate structure to form the holding company Alphabet. Under Alphabet, Nest became an independent company and was heralded as the model business in the "Other Bets" category, which also includes Alphabet's venture capital arms, its smart city project Sidewalk and other experimental businesses.

But looking back, these early former employees say that the split ended up being a setback for both companies. "From the outside it looked like Nest was the perfect poster child for Alphabet but, at the same time, separating it was undoing the thing that was most essential for both companies — figuring out how to make them work together," former Nest CEO Tony Fadell tells CNBC via email.

Nest co-founder Matt Rogers announced that he will be leaving the company:

A day after Alphabet announced plans to roll Nest into its hardware team, co-founder Matt Rogers has announced that he's exiting the company. The story was first noted by CNET and quickly confirmed by Rogers on Twitter.

Could just be social media talk, but Rogers' brief statement on the matter appeared to imply that there were no hard feelings. "Nest has been an amazing journey and the honor of my career to build," he wrote. "I could not be more proud of what we have all accomplished and can't wait to see what's next for Nest."

Also at The Verge.


Original Submission

Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Internet-Connected Doorbells and Cameras, for Over $1 Billion 15 comments

Amazon has acquired Ring for over $1 billion:

Amazon said Tuesday that it had acquired Ring, a maker of internet-connected doorbells and cameras, pushing more deeply into the home security market. The deal is worth around $1.1 billion, according to a person briefed on the deal who would speak only anonymously because the terms were private.

Ring is best known for a doorbell with a security camera inside. The device allows homeowners to monitor visitors at their front door through an app on their phone, even if they're not at home. Amazon has made home automation a major focus because of the success of its Echo family of products, which allow users to control thermostats, surveillance cameras and other connected devices using voice commands.

[...] James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said he believed that Amazon had bought Ring so it could add more intelligent capabilities to its doorbells and cameras, like the ability to use software to recognize faces at the front door. "I think it's about going to the next level and having Alexa say, 'James, your fifth grader just walked in, and I locked the door behind them,'" he said. "It's where these technologies have to go."

Also at The Verge.

Related: Amazon Wants to Deliver Purchases into Your Home
Amazon Key Flaw Could Let Rogue Deliverymen Disable Your Camera


Original Submission

Alphabet Kicks Marwan Fawaz Out of the Nest 1 comment

Nest CEO steps down as division is brought under the Google Home team

Nest CEO Marwan Fawaz is stepping down as the smart home gadget maker is reshuffled yet again, now operating under the Google division responsible for the company's Home smart speakers, according to a report from CNET. Just five months ago, Fawaz oversaw Nest's reintegration under Google; for the last three years, Nest operated as an independent entity under Google parent company Alphabet.

The decision to bring Nest back under the Google umbrella was designed to help hardware chief Rick Osterloh better integrate Nest products with Google's own hardware and software, much of it increasingly driven by artificial intelligence advances. Now, Fawaz is taking on an advisory role, and Nest will be overseen by Rishi Chandra, the vice president of product management for Google's home and living room products. CNET reports that many inside the company felt that Fawaz was not an adequate leader of Nest and more of an operations manager, and the change is reportedly a welcome one.

[...] CNET reports that Alphabet even considered selling Nest in 2016 to none other than Amazon, with talks described as "serious discussions" in an effort known internally as Project Amalfi. Though Fadell reportedly scuttled the deal by threatening to leave, which he would go on to do later that year regardless, it seems like Alphabet leadership has struggled to help Nest grow and find its place within its complex corporate structure.

Also at MarketWatch and TechCrunch.

Related: Google Absorbs Nest, Nest Co-Founder Quits
Amazon Plans to Remove Google's Nest Products After Acquisition of Ring


Original Submission

Amazon Accused of Mishandling Data From Ring Camera Users 13 comments

Reports raise video privacy concerns for Amazon-owned Ring

Amazon-owned smart doorbell maker Ring is facing claims that might give some smart home enthusiasts pause. Recent reports from The Intercept and The Information have accused the company of mishandling videos collected by its line of smart home devices, failing to inform users that their videos would be reviewed by humans and failing to protect the sensitive video footage itself with encryption.

In 2016, Ring moved some of its R&D operations to Ukraine as a cost-saving move. According to The Intercept's sources, that team had "unfettered access to a folder on Amazon's S3 cloud storage service that contained every video created by every Ring camera around the world." That group was also privy to a database that would allow anyone with access the ability to conduct a simple search to find videos linked to any Ring owner. At this time, the video files were unencrypted due to the "sense that encryption would make the company less valuable" expressed by leadership at the company.

At the same time the Ukraine team was allowed this access, Ring "executives and engineers" in the U.S. were allowed "unfiltered, round-the-clock live feeds from some customer cameras" even if that access was completely unnecessary for their work.

Also at The Mercury News.

Previously: Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Internet-Connected Doorbells and Cameras, for Over $1 Billion
Amazon Plans to Remove Google's Nest Products After Acquisition of Ring


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday March 05 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 05 2018, @08:26AM (#647902) Journal

    the latest development in the acrimonious, anti-consumer feud between Amazon and Google

    The consumers have to choose which of the two shits they want more and, perhaps, in the process they'll realise TMB was right all along: the ultimate pleasure of this life is to consume whatever you've caught with your own fishing pole!

    (no, I'm not grinning this time)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by metarox on Monday March 05 2018, @07:34PM

      by metarox (788) on Monday March 05 2018, @07:34PM (#648108) Homepage

      At least for now we can choose none. Maybe some day we won’t have a choice and sabotaging your stuff (ahem licensed stuff) will be illegal.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by anubi on Monday March 05 2018, @08:36AM (3 children)

    by anubi (2828) on Monday March 05 2018, @08:36AM (#647905) Journal

    Did any of NEST's devices require a "cloud" server?

    Stuff like I just read is exactly why I am so leery of buying *anything* that requires someone else's server.

    I never know who is going to wink out at the stroke of a pen. Other people may make money, but now I have more hoops to jump through, that is if it would do any good.

    Its too easy for someone to simply switch off a server once the cash flow of new enrollees tapers off - leaving me with a dead box.

    I remember seeing NEST products at Home Depot, but was so overwhelmed with the geekiness of the thing that I did not know if I had the tech skills to turn it on. I figure if my old school thermostat wasn't good enough, I would use an Arduino. I have had a bad feeling about "high tech" ever since I bought those Circuit City DIVX disks.

    ( Mini-rant: A later experience spending right at $100 for a "digital cross referenced IC Master" did not help much. I thought I was buying a bunch of interlinked HTML files burned onto the CDROM... the HTML equivalent of the IC Master catalog, which was a staple of electronic designers of the day. It was my first taste of embedded DRM, which I never did get that disk to work, and ended up tossing it. I considered the $100 I spent for that disk as tuition teaching me to be wary of anything DRM, as it was a live demonstration to me of how powerless I was after purchasing the thing. I wasn't getting my money back, nor was I to get any use out of the thing. "Rights"? I did not have any. Marketers have played hell trying to get me to bite on anything DRM'd ever since. They might as well spray their good with Liquid Ass before presentation to their customer. )

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @01:13PM (#647948)

      Pretty sure that _all_ of the Nest products require a cloud service. Certainly their "smart" thermostat does.

      A friend worked there before it was part of Google/Alphabet and he tried to convince me to buy one. I passed because we have a non-standard usage pattern -- the thermostat is in the living/dining area where we rarely go in the day time...but we work from home using other rooms. It would almost certainly have turned down the heat for the whole house, since it appears that the house is vacant during the day.

      • (Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday March 05 2018, @05:27PM (1 child)

        by Osamabobama (5842) on Monday March 05 2018, @05:27PM (#648051)

        Your non-standard usage pattern isn't something that couldn't be solved by throwing money at it. Specifically, you could add another Nest to the network, mounted in a room that you frequent. That second thermostat would then communicate wirelessly with the one connected to the furnace, providing temperature control as expected.

        Of course, that's not a reasonable solution. A more reasonable solution would be to manually program it to keep temperature where you want it. That solution, though, could be performed by a much cheaper thermostat, so it's not appropriate, either.

        The last option would be to manually reset the heat via the mobile app on occasions when the thermostat allows the house to cool down because it is erroneously seen as vacant. But nobody buys an expensive thermostat to fight with it on a regular basis...

        --
        Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:41AM

          by anubi (2828) on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:41AM (#648326) Journal

          At this point, I would have used the Arduino.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 0) by MyOpinion on Monday March 05 2018, @02:06PM

    by MyOpinion (6561) on Monday March 05 2018, @02:06PM (#647958) Homepage Journal

    An often disregarded function of Amazon and Google is that they amplify the illusion that there is an open competing world market, that said market works as advertized, and that Amazon and Google are some sort of fruits that emerged out of this "fair competition".

    --
    Truth is like a Lion: you need not defend it; let it loose, and it defends itself. https://discord.gg/3FScNwc
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @08:08PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @08:08PM (#648131)

    This is why companies should be broken up. Online stores shouldn't be allowed to create their own items if they also sell other people's items. Similar to how ISP shouldn't be content creators. With this bullshit Google is going to have to create its own stores to prevent being locked out of the market from Amazon. Then a bunch of other companies will be making their own stores and soon you'll have to pay membership fees to all of them just to be able to pick what you want to buy. It's looking like in the future one company will rule your life and wars will be company vs company rather than nation vs nation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @08:24PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 05 2018, @08:24PM (#648148)

      > Online stores shouldn't be allowed to create their own items if they also sell other people's items.

      Does your supermarket have "house brand" items for sale? Many companies purchase from manufacturers and have the goods private labeled. Why should this be any different because it's "online"? Your proposal sounds like a regulation that would be impossible to enforce.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 05 2018, @09:26PM

        by curunir_wolf (4772) on Monday March 05 2018, @09:26PM (#648193)

        To be fair, what you are talking about ("store brands") is really just a retailer offering a generic version of a commodity alongside a national or regional brand name of the same commodity.

        Those Google and Amazon products are something entirely different. They are each offering a platform or ecosystem consumers can use to access their services and content as well as services and content of different companies. You can't ignore Amazon as a retailer or Google as an Internet services company the same way you can drive a couple of miles to a different grocery store. Well, not easily anyway.

        You're right that there's no way the kind of regulation the GP suggested would fly. But these tech behemoths are really getting out of control.

        --
        I am a crackpot
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:39AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @12:39AM (#648273)

      WTH is a monolopy?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:25AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @03:25AM (#648342)

        jsut a sinple typo...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:00PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 06 2018, @02:00PM (#648492)

    Stop it.
    Seek help.

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