Is the Google and Amazon war nearly over?
A year after announcing that Chromecast would return to its e-commerce shelves, Amazon has finally started selling Google’s streaming gadgets. In fact, it’s selling both the regular and Ultra varieties of Chromecast.
About three years ago, Amazon stopped selling Apple TV and Chromecast because it argued that streaming devices that didn’t support Amazon Prime Video would cause “consumer confusion.” A year ago, it announced it would sell both Apple TV and Chromecast. Shortly after that, Amazon launched the Prime Video app for Apple TV.
Read this: Chromecast tips and tricks you need to know
We’ll have to wait and see whether Amazon adds Chromecast support to its Prime Video apps. Or if this is the beginning of the end of the cold war between Amazon and Google. The search giant was none too happy that Amazon stopped selling its hardware. It also wasn’t happy with the way Amazon implemented YouTube on the Echo Show and Fire TV, so it pulled support for both.
Amazon introduced a web-based workaround, which Google was also unhappy with. Now that Amazon offers some streaming hardware, with a real possibility of Prime Video support for Chromecast, maybe YouTube could eventually make its way back to Amazon’s devices – and the great smart home cold war could finally be over. Maybe.
In the meantime, you can buy the Chromecast for $35 and the Chromecast Ultra for $69 on Amazon. Both Chromecast devices are only available on Amazon US, not yet Amazon UK.
