There's a few differences when compared to Apple: They will host your app and let others install it with a private code for free (you don't have to pay to beco

There's a few differences when compared to Apple: They will host your app and let others install it with a private code for free (you don't have to pay to become a developer, and you don't have to pay to use unapproved apps, nor periodically reinstall them, and unapproved apps get treated the same as other apps, and can be auto-updated, etc). You can (unless this has changed in the past few years since I wrote a Roku app) sideload apps onto your own devices without Roku's involvement. Developing for a Roku device doesn't require buying anything -- you probably want to buy a Roku to test it out on, but that's not a requirement. These differences make the proposition much different. Google doesn't need Roku's permission for writing YouTube unless they want some kind of special treatment outside the published APIs. This part is similar to Apple, where the platform owner can withhold some features from some people.