Amazon adds Firefox browser to Fire TV and it supports YouTube II , Amazon Fire TV Gets Web Browsers So You Can Bypass Google’s YouTube Ban II , Amazon brings web browsing to Fire TV
Amazon has rolled out Mozilla Firefox and Amazon Silk browsers on all Amazon Fire TV devices in over 100 countries and territories.
Amazon brings web browsing to Fire TV(AP)
Amazon on Thursday rolled out Mozilla Firefox and Amazon Silk browsers to its Fire TV devices.
This essentially means users can browse the internet via Fire TV, a Chromecast-like device but with support for built-in apps. With Fire TV, customers already have access to more than 500,000 movies and TV shows.
Amazon’s browsers allow users to surf local and international news sites, video sharing services, cloud photo sites and other social news, sports and entertainment content.
“We want to make it easy for customers to access the Web from the comfort of their couch,” said Marc Whitten, Vice President, Amazon Fire TV and Appstore.
Mark Mayo, Senior Vice President of Firefox, said, “Bringing Firefox to Fire TV is an exciting new way to reach our users and serve up more of the full web to everyone.”
Arrival of the new features comes at a time when Google has threatened to remove its YouTube application from Fire TV. Google has been critical of Amazon’s decision to pull Chromecast support for its Amazon Prime Video service. Amazon did try to mend ties with Google by allowing the sale of Chromecast on its e-commerce platform.
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“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,” Google said earlier this month.
According technology website Engadget, Firefox browser on Amazon also supports YouTube. The browser will let viewers “surface a multitude of web content — including videos,” Mark Mayo, a senior vice president at Firefox told the website.
Amazon on Thursday rolled out Mozilla Firefox and Amazon Silk browsers on all Amazon Fire TV devices in over 100 countries and territories.
With this, customers will able to access popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, as well as local and international news sites, video sharing services, cloud photo sites and other social news, sports, and entertainment content.
"We want to make it easy for customers to access the Web from the comfort of their couch," said Marc Whitten, Vice President, Amazon Fire TV and Appstore.
Mark Mayo, Senior Vice President of Firefox, said: "Bringing Firefox to Fire TV is an exciting new way to reach our users and serve up more of the full web to everyone." With Fire TV, customers already have access to more than 500,000 movies and TV shows.
With this, customers will able to access popular websites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, as well as local and international news sites, video sharing services, cloud photo sites and other social news, sports, and entertainment content.
"We want to make it easy for customers to access the Web from the comfort of their couch," said Marc Whitten, Vice President, Amazon Fire TV and Appstore.
Mark Mayo, Senior Vice President of Firefox, said: "Bringing Firefox to Fire TV is an exciting new way to reach our users and serve up more of the full web to everyone." With Fire TV, customers already have access to more than 500,000 movies and TV shows.
Amazon has updated each one of its Fire TV devices with two internet browsers, namely Silk and Firefox. Silk was already added to some Fire TV devices last month, but now, it’s available in all Fire TV gadgets.
Adding Firefox as a second internet browser option seems to be the direct result of Amazon’s feud with Google, a feud that led to the outright removal of YouTube from the Amazon Echo Show and Fire TV devices.
In a blog post, Firefox didn’t explicitly mention that its browser can be used to access YouTube on Fire TV, but it did say that with it, users can launch popular video websites, which includes YouTube, of course. They can also search any web address and play videos in full screen on Fire TV and Fire TV Stick.
A spokesperson for Firefox has since confirmed that users will indeed be able to view YouTube videos using Firefox on the Fire TV devices. This is by far the most straightforward way to bypass Google’s YouTube ban.
Why exactly are these two tech juggernauts fighting? Well, it all started when Amazon decided to pull Chromecast devices, and eventually, Nest devices as well, from its store over two years ago. Ever since, Google has tried to convince Amazon in getting those products back up, but none prevailed. After years of trying, Google threw in the towel and simply cut off YouTube access on the Amazon Echo Show.
Amazon recently announced that it would start selling Chromecast and Nest devices again on its store in what appears to be an act of compromise, but only after Google made a bombshell announcement that YouTube would be removed completely from the Echo Show and Fire TV devices starting next year.
As of now, the two companies are trying to reach a compromise that will satisfy them both. After all, having YouTube removed from Amazon’s most popular devices is a big gut punch, and having the Chromecast or Nest devices absent from Amazon is also a gut punch.
But at least there’s a workaround if ever Google follows through in its YouTube ban. It’s not clear, however, how Google plans to respond to Fire TV devices being able to access YouTube via Firefox. In a worst case scenario, it could also restrict access to the site, much like how Google restricts YouTube access on the Silk browser on Echo Show devices.
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