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Roku’s streaming platform may be about to lose an important channel, and according to the company it’s due to the anticompetitive demands of Google.
As Axios reports, a carriage agreement between Roku and Google is expiring soon, which means negotiations are underway to sign a new one. However, Roku has emailed customers informing them that the YouTube TV channel could disappear from its platform and streaming devices. As the email explains, “Recent negotiations with Google to carry YouTube TV have broken down because Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users.”
What are there unfair terms? The email references “anticompetitive requirements to manipulate your search results, impact the usage of your data and ultimately cost you more.” Apparently Google is asking Roku to create a dedicated search results row for YouTube within its interface, to block search results from competing content providers, to favor YouTube music results when a user issues voice commands through the remote, and to use specific chips and memory cards.
Roku makes it clear the company hasn’t asked Google for more money as part of a new deal, but that it can’t agree to these demands. And while the dedicated search results, competitor search blocking, and preferential results certainly suggest anti-competitive behavior, the demand to use specific chips and memory cards would increase hardware prices according to Roku, meaning its hardware would also be less competitive at the point of sale.
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