Amazon: about 1,300,000 employees
Google: about 135,000 employees
Roku: about 2,000 employees
Maybe they just don't have the resources to support a rich third-party dev ecosystem
Again, I'm not sure how you can consider a company with a market cap of over 40 billion, and making 1.7 billion in revenue, some sort of "underdog competing against giants".
In their space, it's more like giants bumping each other around.
That's basically the definition of an underdog if you have a fraction of the number of resources (employees).
Which is not about the resources at all but about viewpoint on success.
So i'm going to say "no, it's not basically the definition of an underdog".
Even in slang, you aren't an underdog if you could have whatever you need, but choose not to. You might be one if you need something, don't have the resources to get it, and have to make do anyway.
That is not the case for Roku - they could hire as many people as they like.
These are also not reasonable comparisons since the vast majority of the numbers in the other two companies are not on the software/hardware development side.
I would actually guess if you compared "the size of the team working on Google TV/Amazon Fire TV/etc", Roku is probably bigger (or the sizes were very close).
I would be shocked if it was "tiny" in comparison.
I'm generally pro-open source, so this is not coming from a place of shooting down open source, I'm just reading the context in this thread.
My personal experience is that when one individual has a bunch of problems with a number of others, it is probably the one individual that’s the problem.
> they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roku#Carriage_disputes
4. They have 4 listed disputes in Wikipedia: NBC/Universal, HBO, Spectrum, and Google; the first three were resolved (the first one the same day as the grievance).
There are hundreds (if not hundreds upon hundreds) of services provided over the Roku hardware/service including it's direct competitors (Amazon Prime TV / Fire stick), more than I can sit here and count without wasting my life.
You would have readers believe that Roku is out there pissing everyone off, being the bad kid on the block, making demands and being a troublemaker. They have had 4 disputes. 4. Out of hundreds of partners. 4.
And do consumers benefit from access to 300 "screen savers" but no HBO Max or other service they've paid for but cannot access on Roku? (Note: the HBO dispute was resolved and is now fully supported on Roku, but during its launch, was not available on Roku) Roku wants us to think so, but my family simply says "Let's just get a Google or Fire stick".
The partner count is specious. The real question is whether Roku provides access to the partners each person wants. Removing, or threatening to remove, top players for whatever intention does not engender trust.
Every TV in my house had a Roku a year ago. Post covid, we now have just one. All those tiny partners and apps on the Roku catalog couldn't offset the fact that what the family wanted to see either wasn't on Roku, or was on some corporate gamesmanship countdown.
And it's so disappointing. They were the player without a bias, providing open access to the TV screen to any tiny niche media player. But they changed. Can't blame them, but it feels like this short term money grab of making media and forcing higher fees for access is the first step on the path to being the next Tivo or WebTV.
Why redo everything?
But it does seem like they are fairly successful regardless.