By Dhirendra Tripathi
Investing.com – Roku stock (NASDAQ:ROKU) climbed 9% Wednesday as the company signed a multi-year pact to extend its partnership with YouTube.
“Effective today, we have agreed to a multi-year extension with Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) for YouTube and YouTube TV. This agreement represents a positive development for our shared customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available for all streamers on the Roku platform,” Roku tweeted.
The two companies had been dueling for several months now over accusations of anti-competitive conduct, and threatened to strip the biggest video streaming service from millions of TV devices.
Roku had called Alphabet-owned Google’s terms unfair and said they favored YouTube in search results. YouTube had described its efforts as consumer-friendly and accused Roku of misusing its market power to force a better deal.
Roku removed the YouTube TV app from its channel store after the agreement for that app expired. YouTube, with more than 2 billion monthly users, threatened to pull its main app from Roku on Thursday, when the deal for the service was to end, according to Reuters. Roku said last month it has over 56 million active accounts.
The conclusion of the deal is a relief for Roku and its stakeholders. While users can access apps on TVs through various devices, having popular apps like YouTube on its TVs and streaming devices is a major selling point for a platform company and a franchise like Roku.