After failing to reach a deal with Google, Roku is losing access to YouTube TV — one of the most popular live TV streaming services on the market. While Roku often touts itself as having the largest collection of streaming apps than competing platforms, news like this raises concern if that may be changing.
Roku first warned customers on April 26 that they could lose access to the YouTube TV app, with the company saying, "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. " Specifically, Roku claimed that Google was trying to force the company to manipulate search results and hand over additional customer data — giving YouTube TV an advantage over its competitors. Google quickly denied Roku's allegations, saying that Roku was making "baseless claims."
A few days later, on April 30, Roku sent out emails to the press announcing that it and Google officially failed to reach an agreement, resulting in Roku no longer offering the YouTube TV app on its application store. As reported by TechCrunch, the email reads, "We are disappointed that Google has allowed our agreement for the distribution of YouTube TV to expire. Roku has not asked for one dollar of additional financial consideration from Google to renew YouTube TV."
YouTube TV Can Still Be Used If It's Already Downloaded
From this point forward, searching 'YouTube TV' in Roku's app/channel store won't return any results. If someone has never downloaded the YouTube TV app on their Roku device, they can't install it. However, the good news is that existing YouTube TV users aren't necessarily affected by any of this. If someone has YouTube TV installed on their Roku, they can keep using it like normal with zero impact on their service.
While that is good news for now, things may change down the road. Roku continues in its email that Google could "take actions that require the full removal of the channel." It's unclear how likely that is to happen, but Roku does make it sound like it's a possibility users could be faced with. At this very moment, however, that hasn't happened.
What's even more uncertain is how long this will all last. YouTube TV could eventually come back if Roku and Google can reach some sort of agreement, but considering how both companies are coming at each other's throats right now, it doesn't seem like that'll happen any time soon. In the end, all this does is negatively impact Roku and YouTube TV customers. People that were thinking about signing up for YouTube TV may now be forced to consider a different option, and similarly, people that just signed up for YouTube TV may have to purchase a Fire TV or Apple TV instead of a new Roku. It's annoying, frustrating, and something Google and Roku need to work on fixing as soon as possible.
Source: TechCrunch