YouTube finally comes to Fire TV, ditto for Amazon Prime Video on Chromecast
Our long national nightmare has finally come to an end. After nearly two years of pettiness, Google has finally brought YouTube back to Amazon Fire TV devices. In addition, Amazon has brought its Prime Video app back to Google's Chromecast devices.
An official post on Google's blog confirmed the news, which had originally been announced earlier this year. As of Tuesday, you can boot up your Fire TV or Chromecast and install whichever app you couldn't install for the past couple of years.
If you wanted to catch up on Fleabag on your Chromecast or watch some YouTube cat videos on your Fire TV Stick, now is the time.
In more specific terms, YouTube is now available on the Fire TV Stick basic edition and 2nd generation variants as well as the Fire TV Stick 4K. The Fire TV Cube and television sets with Fire TV built in will also now offer the YouTube option. Support for 4K and 60fps streaming is also included with select devices.
YouTube TV and YouTube Kids aren't available yet, but Google says they'll arrive in the next few months.
On the other side, Amazon is bringing Prime Video to Chromecasts as well as Android TV set-top boxes and smart TVs.
Thus ends a petty squabble between two tech giants that made life harder for consumers for no real reason. Google cut off YouTube support from Fire TV devices in late 2017 because Amazon wasn't accommodating to Google products on its digital marketplace. The end result was that millions couldn't get access to very popular streaming apps.
With Amazon's Prime Day promotion starting next week, it's safe to assume Fire TV sticks will be heavily discounted. This is sure to make them a much better value than they were before they had YouTube support.
Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Alex can be found on Bluesky at yelix.bsky.social.
