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That's disappointing for sure, but it's worth remembering how TINY Roku is compared to its competitors: Amazon: about 1,300,000 employees Google: about 135,00

That's disappointing for sure, but it's worth remembering how TINY Roku is compared to its competitors: 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

arcturus17 5y ago
Which perhaps reinforces the idea that they should have leaned on open-source instead of proprietary tech?
- dubcanada 5y ago
  Roku was a sign company, they made digital sign software. They just converted their existing setup to TV video streaming. Why redo everything?
- capableweb 5y ago
  If anything, their track record seems to reinforce the opposite idea. Their company is tiny but has a 37% market share according to previous comment, all while having a shitty and closed down developer ecosystem. 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.
  - anyfactor 5y ago
    To me Roku seems like they are trying to modernize the TV cable industry rather than revolutionize it. They are following a different business model than most modern tech companies.
    - xattt 5y ago
      Wikipedia has a history of carriage disputes between the company and other companies. Sure, the recent Google spat could have been a one-off thing, but they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks. 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.
      - spinax 5y ago
        I find your presentation of this argument disingenuous and in bad faith. > they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roku#Carriage_disputes 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). https://channelstore.roku.com https://channelstore.roku.com 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.
        mwexler 5y ago
        You don't mention the current disputes with YouTube and Amazon. If we look at top streaming players Roku has had a dispute with, they've almost collected the whole set! 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.
  - thefreeman 5y ago
    It's just because they had a massive head start and targeted an older generation. Also if that 37% includes smart tv's with "roku" built in that is artificially inflating the number.
Moosdijk 5y ago
How many of those amazon/Google employees are working on their respective roku alternatives? Your numbers don't really mean anything. For instance, Google could just as well only allocate 10 people to the chrome cast project, turning your statement around.
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  The point is that Roku are tiny underdogs competing against giants. If Google has only 10 people working on Chromecast, that's a choice they've made, not a resource constraint.
  - d3nj4l 5y ago
    It doesn't matter if it's a choice they've made if they still beat Roku's dev ecosystem hands down. If Google can make a stellar dev experience out of Chromecast/Android TV with 10 engineers but Roku can't with 100 then it's entirely on Roku. The result matters more than whatever happens behind the scenes.
  - DannyBee 5y ago
    No they aren't, though they like to try to make people feel this way. 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.
    - netr0ute 5y ago
      > a company with a market cap of over 40 billion, and making 1.7 billion in revenue That's basically the definition of an underdog if you have a fraction of the number of resources (employees).
      - DannyBee 5y ago
        Well, i mean, technically the definition of an underdog is ": a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest" 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.
IshKebab 5y ago
2000 employees is pretty huge for a company that just makes a streaming box isn't it? Amazon and Google do way way more things.
resonious 5y ago
Not enough resources to support third party dev, but plenty enough to invest in their own programming language seems like odd priorities to me. But it does seem like they are fairly successful regardless.
DannyBee 5y ago
Roku has a market cap of >40billion, and >1.7billion in revenue. They have the resources to do whatever they want. 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

arcturus17 5y ago

Which perhaps reinforces the idea that they should have leaned on open-source instead of proprietary tech?

dubcanada 5y ago
Roku was a sign company, they made digital sign software. They just converted their existing setup to TV video streaming. Why redo everything?
capableweb 5y ago
If anything, their track record seems to reinforce the opposite idea. Their company is tiny but has a 37% market share according to previous comment, all while having a shitty and closed down developer ecosystem. 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.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  To me Roku seems like they are trying to modernize the TV cable industry rather than revolutionize it. They are following a different business model than most modern tech companies.
  - xattt 5y ago
    Wikipedia has a history of carriage disputes between the company and other companies. Sure, the recent Google spat could have been a one-off thing, but they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks. 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.
    - spinax 5y ago
      I find your presentation of this argument disingenuous and in bad faith. > they seem to have an issue with a lot of folks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roku#Carriage_disputes 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). https://channelstore.roku.com https://channelstore.roku.com 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.
      - mwexler 5y ago
        You don't mention the current disputes with YouTube and Amazon. If we look at top streaming players Roku has had a dispute with, they've almost collected the whole set! 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.
- thefreeman 5y ago
  It's just because they had a massive head start and targeted an older generation. Also if that 37% includes smart tv's with "roku" built in that is artificially inflating the number.

Moosdijk 5y ago

How many of those amazon/Google employees are working on their respective roku alternatives? Your numbers don't really mean anything. For instance, Google could just as well only allocate 10 people to the chrome cast project, turning your statement around.

ForHackernews 5y ago
The point is that Roku are tiny underdogs competing against giants. If Google has only 10 people working on Chromecast, that's a choice they've made, not a resource constraint.
- d3nj4l 5y ago
  It doesn't matter if it's a choice they've made if they still beat Roku's dev ecosystem hands down. If Google can make a stellar dev experience out of Chromecast/Android TV with 10 engineers but Roku can't with 100 then it's entirely on Roku. The result matters more than whatever happens behind the scenes.
- DannyBee 5y ago
  No they aren't, though they like to try to make people feel this way. 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.
  - netr0ute 5y ago
    > a company with a market cap of over 40 billion, and making 1.7 billion in revenue That's basically the definition of an underdog if you have a fraction of the number of resources (employees).
    - DannyBee 5y ago
      Well, i mean, technically the definition of an underdog is ": a loser or predicted loser in a struggle or contest" 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.

IshKebab 5y ago

2000 employees is pretty huge for a company that just makes a streaming box isn't it? Amazon and Google do way way more things.

resonious 5y ago

Not enough resources to support third party dev, but plenty enough to invest in their own programming language seems like odd priorities to me. But it does seem like they are fairly successful regardless.

DannyBee 5y ago

Roku has a market cap of >40billion, and >1.7billion in revenue. They have the resources to do whatever they want. 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.

deleted 5y ago
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