After Several Months Of Fighting, YouTube And Roku Finally Reconciled, Win-Win Solution

JAKARTA - YouTube and Roku Inc on Wednesday announced a multi-year pact to end a months-long battle over allegations of anti-competitive behavior and threaten to remove the internet's largest video streaming service from tens of millions of TV sets.

"Roku and Google have agreed to a multi-year extension for YouTube and YouTube TV," the company said on Twitter. "This agreement is a positive development for our mutual subscribers, making YouTube and YouTube TV available to all streamers on the Roku platform."

YouTube owners Alphabet Inc's Google and streaming platform Roku have been at odds with each other openly since April over the technical and financial requirements to distribute the flagship YouTube app and its YouTube TV service.

Roku has challenged what it describes as unfair terms such as favoring YouTube in search results and updating its hardware. YouTube has described its efforts as consumer-friendly, and says Roku is the one using its market power to force better deals.

Public squabbles over distribution agreements and ad revenue sharing have become commonplace in the field of broadcast and video streaming.

Roku removed the YouTube TV app from its channel store after the agreement for the app expired. YouTube, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, threatened to pull its main app from Roku last Thursday, when the deal for the service was due to expire.

Major apps like YouTube built into devices like Roku televisions and streaming media players are major selling points for the hardware. While its users can access YouTube's services in other ways, the multi-year agreement prevents a threat to Roku's business. Roku said last month it had 56.4 million active accounts.