Google and Amazon are fierce competitors over smart assistants, with Alexa having the lead in the consumer smart speaker space, as well as the enterprise. However, the retailer has just lost its head of Alexa AI research to Google Cloud.
Amazon is the go-to place for shopping for millions of people, but online shopping still has its caveats. Mainly, you don’t get to see what the item looks like in person, giving you a sense of where it could fit in your home. Thanks to augmented reality, however, Amazon is trying to solve that…
After Amazon announced that it would be removing lockscreen ads from Prime Exclusive Android devices last week, some were upset because they’d previously paid to remove those ads. To make things right, Amazon will be sending those customers refunds…
Several days ago, Amazon announced that it would no longer be placing ads on its Prime Exclusive Android phones. With this change, Amazon plans to remove its ads from the phones it already sold, but that rollout will take time. Thankfully, someone already got their hands on the update that removes the ads…
Back in 2016, Amazon introduced Prime Exclusive Phones that took a page from its Kindle line and featured lockcsreen offers and ads. In exchange, the devices are available to Prime subscribers at a subsidized price. This month, Amazon is dropping lockscreen offers and ads on all Prime Exclusive Phones. This is likely due to recent Google Play rule changes.
Update: A few minutes after publishing, YouTube’s optimized experience has returned to the Fire TV.
The Google and Amazon dispute has reached its latest salvo with YouTube’s TV-optimized web version now blocked on the Fire TV. Users of the competing Amazon product can still access the video site, but only through an unintuitive desktop experience.
Amazon has today brought full voice control to its Alexa app for Android and will be coming shortly to iOS as well. Previously, the Alexa app was more of a hub to customize Echo speakers and other smart home settings.
With Amazon announcing that it would begin selling Chromecasts, it seemed that the retailer and Google were finally de-escalating long-running tensions. However, it seems that a deal hasn’t been reached in time as Amazon is telegraphing the impending 2018 block of YouTube to all Fire TV users.
There has been a very public dispute happening between Google and Amazon for some time now. In it, we have seen Amazon stop selling many Google products, and we have witnessed YouTube get removed from several of the online shopping giant’s streaming devices.
Thankfully, especially for consumers, it appears as though the two companies are starting to work together, which might have now lead to Amazon releasing a Prime Video app for Android TV…
YouTube has a massive community of users, and that’s a good thing. However, it’s also a double-edged sword. YouTube being such a large and widely used platform essentially means it goes unchallenged, leaving creators and companies no alternative when things don’t go their way. Amazon recently faced a problem with that, and now it seems the company may have plans to take on the platform…
In early December, Google and Amazon’s product dispute escalated resulting in the removal of YouTube from the Echo Show, but more importantly Fire TV. Today, the online retailer appears to be acquiescing to Google’s complaints over the lack of Chromecast devices on sale.
Amazon launched its Music Unlimited service just over a year ago, adding to competition in the streaming music space – and a major international expansion today sees it available in 28 new countries.
Amazon quickly followed its US launch by rolling out the service to Austria, Germany and the UK the following month, and Japan later. It subsequently offered a family plan and student deal, and recently added Chromecast support to its Android app …
Back in November, YouTube finally returned to the Echo Show as a basic web wrapper of the desktop site. Today, tensions between Google and Amazon have escalated, resulting in the removal of YouTube from the screened Echo device and more critically the Fire TV line of streaming devices
We learned earlier this year that the average smartphone user spends 2h 15m a day using apps, and new data suggests that more of this time than ever is spent using shopping apps.
App Annie data shows that time spent in digital-first retailer apps like Amazon increased by 44% year-on-year in the first half of 2017 …
Amazon’s Fire OS, which runs on all of its Fire tablets and Fire streaming sticks/boxes, is finally getting an upgrade to 7.1.2 Nougat. While this forked version of Android is a pretty big step up from Fire OS 5 (which is based on Lollipop or Marshmallow depending on the device), unfortunately, version 6 won’t be rolling out to many devices…
Earlier today we received a pair of juicy tips via email that we couldn’t yet verify, and they mentioned a potentially important forthcoming Google product that we’d only heard whispers about once before: a competitor to the Amazon Echo Show.
Now, thanks to TechCrunch’s apparent quick corroboration, we know that this information likely paints an accurate picture of Google’s plans for such a device. Apparently Google has an Echo Show competitor in the works with a 7-inch display and support for lots of its own services.
As we approach the holiday season, we expect to hear about new products that will hit the market in time for buyers to snatch them for themselves or loved ones. Before today, we knew for sure that Google had plans to introduce the Home Mini at next week’s event. What we didn’t expect was for Amazon to announced an entire line of new Echo products. And on top of that, we exclusively reported that Google had plans to introduce a premium Home called the ‘Max’ (although we don’t know if that’s coming before the end of the year).
This holiday season, do you plan to buy any new Google Home or Amazon Echo products?
Back in May, Amazon announced the Echo Show, a new version of the company’s virtual assistant speaker with a built-in screen. Since its release, when users asked to watch cooking and music videos, it pulled them from YouTube. All of that changed today as Google has now removed YouTube support from the Echo Show…
In 2014, Google Glass founder and former head Babak Parviz left the X division to join Amazon as it began ramping up on hardware. The online retailer is now reportedly set to launch smart glasses that feature its Alexa assistant and a home security camera system as soon as this year.
Previously, if you wanted to watch content from Amazon Prime on your Android device, you had to jump through several hoops and sideload several APKs. Amazon is changing all of that as it has uploaded its Prime Video app to the Play Store for users from all over the world to download…
At the beginning of last week, Amazon removed Blu smartphones from its website following the finding of a “potential security issue.” However, after a little less than a week since this announcement was made, all appears to be well once again.
Without any type of formal announcement, Amazon is rolling out an update to its mobile application on Android that enables Alexa, the company’s virtual assistant, to be used while shopping…
Over recent months, Amazon has quietly started rolling out a new in-house installation service that aims to offer installation of Alexa products, as well as other devices. The effort is detailed in a new report from Recode, drawing similarities to Best Buy’s Geek Squad installation and repair service…
Amazon’s Prime Exclusive program isn’t a stranger to bringing just-announced smartphones to the market, but it’s not often that we see phones go official for the first time through the program. That, however, is happening today. Amazon has just launched 5 new smartphones for the Prime Exclusive program including the unannounced Alcatel IDOL 5S.
