“Amazon said on Thursday that it would stop selling devices from Apple and Google that compete with its own streaming media players, escalating the entertainment battle between the major tech companies,” reports The New York Times.
Writes TechCrunch, “In an anti-competitive move that bumps up against one of Amazon’s core principles – “customer obsession” – the online retailer confirmed today that it would no longer allow the sales of some competing media players, including Apple TV and Chromecast, on its shopping site. Specifically, the company informed its marketplace sellers by way of email that no new product listings would be allowed and any remaining inventory would be removed from the site on October 29th.”
The Tech Crunch story says the following email was sent by Amazon to its third party sellers:
Dear Seller,
Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime. It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion. Therefore, Amazon has implemented listing restrictions for the followings products:
Apple TV
Chromecast
Nexus Player
Effective immediately, you may no longer create new listings for these products, and as of 10/29/15, any existing listings for these products will be removed. There will be no adverse impact on your seller account for the removal, but we request that you refrain from relisting removed products.
Roku, XBOX, and PlayStation all interact well with Prime Video and are not affected by this change.
Thank you for selling on Amazon.
Sincerely, Amazon Services
Did Microsoft prevent Google from Internet Explorer? Did Google prevent Bing from Chrome? Will the 4 Amazon apps, including Amazon app and the Amazon Prime app be blocked by Apple? We are seeing a new day in the internet world, where friendly competition was encouraged in the past, as it improved everyone. Obviously, Amazon can’t compete and keep up with the others, so it has decided the only way to compete is to block the competition. Short term this may work, but long-term this will be a major issue for the online business world.
Like Google eliminating and stomping competition, and Apple Notorious for same, Jeff Bezos, what, or who is next? Your 3rd party seller?