Looks Like It’s Time for the U.S. Department of Justice to Investigate Apple Again

Spencer Soper, reporting for Bloomberg, “Amazon to Ban Sale of Apple, Google Video-Streaming Devices”:

Amazon.com Inc. is flexing its e-commerce muscles to gain an edge on competitors in the video-streaming market by ending the sale of devices from Google Inc. and Apple Inc. that aren’t easily compatible with Amazon’s video service.

The Seattle-based Web retailer sent an e-mail to its marketplace sellers that it will stop selling Apple TV and Google’s Chromecast. No new listings for the products will be allowed and posting of existing inventory will be removed Oct. 29, Amazon said. Amazon’s streaming service, called Prime Video, doesn’t run easily on its rival’s hardware.

“Over the last three years, Prime Video has become an important part of Prime,” Amazon said. “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion.”

Given that they have Amazon Prime apps for iPhone and iPad, why not just make an Amazon Prime app for Apple TV? When they say “It’s important that the streaming media players we sell interact well with Prime Video in order to avoid customer confusion”, do they mean that they’ll only sell media players that include Amazon Prime by default?

★ Thursday, 1 October 2015