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Google and Amazon are in ‘productive’ talks to keep YouTube on Fire TV

Google and Amazon are in ‘productive’ talks to keep YouTube on Fire TV

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The annoying feud might soon come to an end

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Amazon Fire TV 2017
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Fire TV owners might not be losing YouTube after all. This afternoon, a Google spokesperson told The Verge that the companies are engaged in “productive discussions” in hopes of reaching “an agreement for the benefit of our mutual customers.” Such an agreement would almost certainly result in the massively popular video app staying put on Amazon’s streaming devices.

The new statement comes on the same day that Amazon announced it would resume sales of the Google Chromecast and Apple TV after dropping them from its store more than two years ago. Other Google-branded products like Google Home remain unavailable from Amazon.com.

Amazon’s decision could be viewed as an olive branch intended to ease a growing and very public feud between two tech giants. And now Google is responding in kind, offering a fair amount of hope that it might cancel earlier plans to pull YouTube off the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick as of January 1st, 2018. YouTube has already been removed from the Echo Show (twice), which led Amazon to criticize Google for selectively blocking access to “an open website.”