Online mega-retailer Amazon is using its market power to slow the sales of competing media streaming products from Google and Apple.
The Seattle-based company sent an email to marketplace resellers that they cannot post listings for the Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast video streaming products after October 29, according to a Bloomberg report.
Apple TV and Chromecast do not easily stream video from the Amazon Prime Video service. The market-leading streamer from Roku easily streams Amazon Prime, so it can still be sold at Amazon. The same goes for Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation.
The Apple and Google devices also compete directly with Amazon’s Fire TV stick, which can be plugged into a smart TV to stream video from services like Amazon Prime and Netflix.
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Amazon’s move is a surprisingly aggressive one, and one that limits consumer choice in the Amazon marketplace. Amazon said it’s just trying to remove confusion.
“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” said an Amazon spokesperson in a statement. “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 spokesperson wrote.
The success of Amazon Prime is apparently worth the public relations hit Amazon may take because of the ban.
