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grandalf | 8 years ago
My personal view as a user of both companies' hardware and software is that Amazon is taking the lead. I bought a Fire TV a few weeks ago and it comes with a remote and turns any monitor into a useful, standalone entertainment device.
I also have a chromecast, which requires an app to stream (and the streaming tends to freeze or hang and frequently gets confused if you try to stream something from a different app while another stream has hung).
I also bought a $29 Kindle Fire that strongly outperforms my $200+ Nexus 7. When Google started getting into the hardware market I was hoping we'd see affordable, subsidized hardware, but instead we're getting high priced "luxury" phones which happen to be a bit cheaper than those sold by the market leader.
Of the two companies, I think Amazon has a strategy that is poised to take the lead in hardware. I say this after also buying a BLU Amazon ad-supported phone for $59 that has a super large screen and performs somewhere between an iPhone 5 and iPhone 6+ (I bought it a year ago).
One nice thing about the Alphabet reorganization is that we can see how hard this sort of competitive landscape is really hitting Google. We've already seen lots of free tier services getting taken away and many other signs of lower margins, and so the threat to block Youtube feels like an admission of weakness.
Also, FWIW, the minute Google blocks the Fire Youtube app, Amazon can simply make the icon load Youtube in the web browser.
Mindwipe|8 years ago