Gmail finally started rolling out its dark theme today, but other important stories of the day included a leak of Amazon’s new earbuds, changes to the Lyft app, and also the news that Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot is heading to some businesses.
The Sony Xperia 1 is a device that’s known best for its super-tall 21:9 display. Today, Amazon has announced that the Xperia 1 will be its latest Alexa hands-free smartphone, and it’s going to be $100 off to celebrate.
Smart speakers are inherently terrifying to many users. After all, a speaker with microphones could gather a lot of data on you. Now, a report has revealed that Google’s competitor Amazon is apparently giving a team of Alexa “reviewers” access to customer data including their location and audio clips.
Last year, Amazon made waves in the smart home space by acquiring Ring for over $1 billion. Known for home security doorbells, a new report today claims that the company has a lax stance towards privacy that allowed more employees than seemingly necessary to access customers’ live camera feeds.
The petty feud between Google and Amazon have resulted in a lot of headaches for consumers, but one of the biggest has revolved around the Chromecast. For years, the product has been unavailable from the world’s largest online retailer. Today, though, the Chromecast is finally available from Amazon once again.
Android TV is slowly making a comeback, and Amazon wants in, despite recent overt competition between the two tech giants. To dip its toes in the water, Amazon is starting by creating an Amazon Music app for Android TV.
While Google offers its own option for buying and reading e-books on Android, Amazon’s Kindle service is still the most popular option for that on the market today. Now, the Android app is finally adding split-screen support, as well as announcing a new feature.
Just like with Microsoft’s Cortana, you can now set Amazon Alexa as the default on your Google Pixel 2 and many other Android handsets. If you aren’t a fan of Google Assistant, here’s how to change your default voice assistant to Alexa on the Google Pixel 2.
If you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, you most likely heard that the company is increasing the program’s cost by $20. If you don’t want to pay the additional amount but do have some extra funds, you can get around the increase for years to come. Here’s how…
Getting media to your TV has never been as easy as it is today. For years now, we’ve had options with Google’s Chromecast, Roku, Amazon’s Fire TV and more. At this point, it’s really coming down to who can get the most attention from consumers. Now, Amazon is teasing an upcoming product that may do just that…
Six months ago, Amazon launched a new Amazon Key service to allow its delivery staff to unlock your front door and leave packages inside your home while you’re out. It’s today following that up with a variation that will allow access to the trunk of your parked car …
Alphabet and Amazon are fierce competitors with several areas of increasing overlap. This includes the enterprise cloud market, smart assistants, and now home delivery. Today, the retailer overtook Alphabet in terms of being the more valuable company, with Google’s parent dropping to the third place ranking.
Google’s Chromecast is one of the most popular streaming devices on the market, but buying one isn’t quite as easy as others. Sure, you can walk into your local Walmart or Best Buy and pick it up, or order from Google’s online store, but the device hasn’t been available through Amazon, the internet’s biggest retailer, for years. Now, the one sliver of hope we had is gone…
Google and Amazon are fierce competitors over smart assistants, with Alexa having the lead in the consumer smart speaker space, as well as the enterprise. However, the retailer has just lost its head of Alexa AI research to Google Cloud.
Amazon is the go-to place for shopping for millions of people, but online shopping still has its caveats. Mainly, you don’t get to see what the item looks like in person, giving you a sense of where it could fit in your home. Thanks to augmented reality, however, Amazon is trying to solve that…
After Amazon announced that it would be removing lockscreen ads from Prime Exclusive Android devices last week, some were upset because they’d previously paid to remove those ads. To make things right, Amazon will be sending those customers refunds…
Several days ago, Amazon announced that it would no longer be placing ads on its Prime Exclusive Android phones. With this change, Amazon plans to remove its ads from the phones it already sold, but that rollout will take time. Thankfully, someone already got their hands on the update that removes the ads…
Back in 2016, Amazon introduced Prime Exclusive Phones that took a page from its Kindle line and featured lockcsreen offers and ads. In exchange, the devices are available to Prime subscribers at a subsidized price. This month, Amazon is dropping lockscreen offers and ads on all Prime Exclusive Phones. This is likely due to recent Google Play rule changes.
Update: A few minutes after publishing, YouTube’s optimized experience has returned to the Fire TV.
The Google and Amazon dispute has reached its latest salvo with YouTube’s TV-optimized web version now blocked on the Fire TV. Users of the competing Amazon product can still access the video site, but only through an unintuitive desktop experience.
Amazon has today brought full voice control to its Alexa app for Android and will be coming shortly to iOS as well. Previously, the Alexa app was more of a hub to customize Echo speakers and other smart home settings.
With Amazon announcing that it would begin selling Chromecasts, it seemed that the retailer and Google were finally de-escalating long-running tensions. However, it seems that a deal hasn’t been reached in time as Amazon is telegraphing the impending 2018 block of YouTube to all Fire TV users.
There has been a very public dispute happening between Google and Amazon for some time now. In it, we have seen Amazon stop selling many Google products, and we have witnessed YouTube get removed from several of the online shopping giant’s streaming devices.
Thankfully, especially for consumers, it appears as though the two companies are starting to work together, which might have now lead to Amazon releasing a Prime Video app for Android TV…
YouTube has a massive community of users, and that’s a good thing. However, it’s also a double-edged sword. YouTube being such a large and widely used platform essentially means it goes unchallenged, leaving creators and companies no alternative when things don’t go their way. Amazon recently faced a problem with that, and now it seems the company may have plans to take on the platform…
