Amazon to stop sale of Google Chromecast and Apple TV
﻿Amazon ﻿has quietly told its marketplace sellers that from the end of October it will no longer distribute the Google Chromecast or Apple TV. This is surprising news as they are ruling out sales from the second and fourth best-selling streaming boxes from its digital shelves. A representative from Amazon said that "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.”

Amazon has quietly informed its marketplace sellers that as of October 29, it will no longer sell the Google Chromecast or Apple TV. In doing so, it will absent the second and fourth best-selling streaming boxes from its digital shelves.

The move, first reported by Bloomberg Businessweek and confirmed to WIRED, comes in advance of the release of the next-generation versions of those products. The new Chromecast is already available for order from the Google Store, while the new Apple TV ships later this month.

Perhaps as surprising as the decision itself was Amazon’s rationale. Rather than the obvious motivation of not wanting to enable the success of two powerful competitors to its streaming Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, an Amazon spokesperson provided the following statement:

It certainly looks like an anti-competitive move, and goes against Amazon's reputation as the 'everything store.' Jan Dawson, Jackdaw Research

“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.”

That logic, which could charitably be described as “unlikely,” and less so as “brazen misdirection,” doesn’t add up, according to streaming media analyst Dan Rayburn.

“If you’re trying to remove confusion about Prime streaming, why didn’t you remove that confusion six months ago or a year ago?” asks Rayburn. "If you’re going to do that, why aren’t you removing TVs from your marketplace that don’t support Prime streaming? Why aren’t you removing tablets from your marketplace that don’t support Prime streaming? There’s a lot of other things they could be removing.”

They’re not, though. Instead, they’re removing a dongle and a set-top box that, despite being well over two years old, sell nearly as well as Amazon’s brand new, correlative products on Amazon’s own site. And they’re doing so right after the latest versions of that dongle and set-top box have been released.

“It’s interesting that they do it right after a brand new Apple TV is announced. Right after new Chromecasts are announced. Right after they announce their own, upgraded Fire TVs and sticks,” says Rayburn. “I find that a little suspicious.”

Flex Time

Amazon’s not the only company to disallow competitive products in its stores. In fact, it’s not even the first company in this imbroglio to do so; nearly a year ago, on the heels of purchasing Beats, Apple removed Bose headphone and stereo products from its shelves.

It’s also notable that Amazon’s not targeting an entire product category here; Roku remains unaffected, as do Xbox and PlayStation, all of which carry Instant Video. It speaks to the power Amazon wields, however, that if a smaller player like Roku had been included in the reaping, it may well have been a fatal blow. As is, it’s more of a healthy swat.

“It would be a much, much bigger deal if it were impacting someone like Roku. But it’s not as if people can’t pick up an Apple TV at a physical store,” says Rayburn. “With Chromecast, it’ll certainly impact things, but if you really want to get it you can get it at a lot of places.”

Most people don’t go a lot of places, though. Most people go to Amazon. The company reported sales of $23.18 billion in the second quarter of this year alone, which very roughly works out to about $250 million a day. It ranked ninth among the National Retail Federation’s top 100 retailers; the only other Internet-only company on the list was Dell, which squeaked in at 100th.