On December 5, Amazon filed trademark requests for the names “OpenTube” and “AmazonTube,” seemingly to be preparing to launch its own streaming service. The trademarks do not necessarily mean that there’s a plan to come up with a new service but the retail giant might want to challenge Google by this move in the entertainment industry.
The filings are of an app for “transmitting, accessing, receiving, uploading, downloading, encoding, decoding, streaming, broadcasting, sharing, displaying, formatting, manipulating, organizing, bookmarking, tagging, storing, caching, and transferring electronic works.” According to the filings, these activities could include videos, photos, text, documents, or books.
Amazon claimed that its new product ‘will be a social networking site,’ using “wireless telecommunications networks in the field of online social networking.” This is another indication of Amazon running behind Google copying its YouTube style.
The last two years, the rivalry saw Amazon refusing to sell Google Chromecast devices via its site. Last Friday, Amazon announced that these devices and Apple TV would be sold by them since now. Although, none of these devices are yet to be listed on the site. Most humorously, today Amazon Fire TVs started supporting the Firefox browser of Mozilla, rival to the extraordinarily leading Chrome of Google.
On the other hand, Google announced that it would remove its YouTube app on Jan 1 from the Fire TV devices. Adding to the mix is that this announcement was made on the same day Amazon filed the trademarks. This was a response to Amazon withholding its services of Prime Video from Chromecast devices of Google. In context, Amazon’s Echo Show devices do not have YouTube either.
Returning to Amazon’s new service, targeting YouTube is ideal given its industry status. One key fact is that it is already packing AWS, having unrestricted access to the most powerful servers in the world. Numerous major services like Netflix and Slack rely on AWS for server capacity.
Amazon is known for chasing the leading social media platforms for expanding commercially. It also has a strong foothold in video streaming market via its Amazon video service. Therefore, Amazon’s new product still remains cloudy.
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