For more than 15 years, Amazon has worked to build a reputation as the “everything” store, where virtually any product you might want to (legally) purchase can be found and ordered. The company has now announced that this will no longer be the case. By October 29, no listings for either Google’s Chromecast or Apple’s Apple TV will be accepted at Amazon. The company’s reasoning?
“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” an Amazon representative stated. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Roku, XBOX, PlayStation and Fire TV are excellent choices.”
The reason Amazon is making this change has nothing to do with the usefulness of Prime Video. By most measurements, less than 20% of Amazon users buy Amazon Prime in the first place. Furthermore, there’s absolutely nothing stopping Amazon from creating an Android application that includes Chromecast support. Granted, Apple’s walled garden is a much tougher nut to crack, but there are already workarounds and options available on the Android side of the equation.