YouTube sticks to Roku hardware after reaching multi-year deal By Reuters

Labarish Dave

(Reuters) – YouTube and Roku Inc on Wednesday announced a multi-year agreement to end a months-long battle over allegations of anti-competitive behavior that threatened to strip tens of millions of TV sets from the internet’s largest video streaming service.

“Roku and Google (NASDAQ 🙂 have agreed to a multi-year extension for both YouTube and YouTube TV,” the two companies said on Twitter (NYSE:)). “This agreement is a positive development for our subscribed customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available to all streaming operators on the Roku platform.”

YouTube owner Google and streaming platform Roku have publicly clashed since April due to the technical and financial circumstances of distributing the main YouTube app and YouTube TV service.

Roku had objected to what it described in unfair terms, such as favoring YouTube in search results and updating its devices.

YouTube has described its efforts as consumer-friendly, saying that it is Roku that is using its market power to force a more beneficial deal.

Public disputes over ad revenue sharing and distribution agreements have become common in broadcast and video streaming.

Roku has removed the YouTube TV app from its channel store after the app’s deal expired. YouTube, which has more than two billion monthly users, threatened to pull the main Roku app on Thursday as the service’s deal expires.

Essential apps like YouTube, built into devices like Roku TVs and streaming media players, are one of the devices’ most popular selling points. And while its users can access YouTube services in other ways, the multi-year agreement avoids threatening Roku’s business.

Roku said last month that it has 56.4 million active accounts.

(Reporting by Dave Parrish; translated by Flora Gomez. Editing by Javier Lira)