Amazon-YouTube Fight Reaches New Levels Of Pettiness With ‘AmazonTube’ Trademark

Online retail giant Amazon and video streaming behemoth YouTube are having a fight right now, and the pettiness seems to have reached new levels. The crux of the argument is in Google’s decision to remove the YouTube app from Amazon’s devices, which include the Echo Show and Fire TV products. In retaliation, Jeff Bezos’ company filed a trademark for something called “AmazonTube.”

One of the first to notice the trademark filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was the website TV Answer Man with a post wondering if Amazon was planning on launching a competitor to YouTube. It’s worth noting that companies file trademarks all the time and the same goes for patents. A lot of them turn out to be nothing but calling dibs on certain ideas and names.

Then again, this could also just easily be Amazon’s answer to YouTube’s threats in their ongoing spat, TechCrunch notes. Publicly, the two companies have been trying to maintain an image of civility, but signs of increasing tensions have been coming for both sides.

Aside from “AmazonTube,” there’s also a trademark filing for “OpenTube,” both of were described in the documents to have properties with unmistakable similarities to that of Google’s video hosting services. Amazon has actually launched a video platform in the past called “Amazon Video Direct,” which is still active today. It’s nowhere near as popular as YouTube, of course, but it’s there.

The chances of Amazon directly challenging Google with its own “non-downloadable pre-recorded audio, visual and audiovisual works via wireless networks on a variety of topics of general interest” would be something of a leap. It’s likely that the retail giant was just trying to rattle the search engine company and pressure it to give in.

It could also mean that Amazon is looking at all of its options in case its talks with Google breaks down. The company needs a video hosting service for its products and if it can’t get it via YouTube, it might just create its own.