YOUTUBE PULLS THE PLUG ON AMAZON'S ECHO SHOW

In what was apparently a surprise to Amazon, Google prompted the withdrawal of YouTube access on Amazon's Echo Show products midday Tuesday (9/26).

Amazon debuted the Echo Show in June, it includes a touch screen tablet with voice command capabilities. It had previously displayed YouTube videos sans a lot of its signature functions like "Up Next" video recommendations and channel subscriptions.

Now, however, if one were to ask Alexa to play a video from YouTube she very coolly responds “Currently, Google is not supporting YouTube on Echo Show.”

While Amazon took the withdrawal as a sudden blow, claiming it was "without explanation and without notification to customers," Google proprietors Alphabet had another story.

Alphabet claims “Amazon’s implementation of YouTube on the Echo Show violates our terms of service, creating a broken user experience. We hope to be able to reach an agreement and resolve these issues soon,” according to a statement from Alphabet on the incident.

It's perhaps important to also note that the Echo series is currently outselling Google's comparable product the Google Home by three-to-one according to Fortune.

In a related story, if you ask Alexa to research YouTube Head of Music Lyor Cohen, you'll just get this.