For Amazon, this was a week of war and peace. On Tuesday, Google said it would cut off Amazon's Fire TV streaming devices from YouTube, starting on January 1. Google also immediately began blocking YouTube from Amazon's Echo Show smart screen device, marking the second time it has done so. The search giant said it was responding to unfair treatment by Amazon, which won't sell Google devices through its online store and won't bring Amazon Prime Video support to Chromecast. The following morning, Amazon made good on its plans to launch a Prime Video app on Apple TV. The new app, first announced back in June, is a full endorsement of Apple's platform, supporting 4K HDR video and unique tvOS features like Siri search and TV app aggregation.

While people fret about robots taking human jobs, machines in Japan are stepping in to fill vacancies amid the worst labor shortage in more than 40 years. That is creating an opportunity for up-and-coming startups focused on automating warehouse tasks. Nitori Holdings Co., the nation's biggest furniture maker, last week deployed 79 robots to move around shelves filled with products at its Osaka distribution center. The company, which introduced the country's first automated furniture warehouse in 1980, is looking to reduce its reliance on human labor. Japan's shrinking pool of workers helped push the number of jobs for every applicant to a ratio of 1.55 in October, the highest since 1973, according to the labor ministry. Inc. have been investing in warehouse automation for years, many Japanese logistics providers are now scrambling to catch up.

File photo: People are silhouetted as they pose with mobile devices in front of a screen projected with a Youtube logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014. Google is pulling YouTube from Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV devices over the online retailer's refusal to carry certain products from the search company. In pulling the YouTube support, Google said its own products, Google Home and Chromecast, are not available for sale on Amazon. Last month, the e-commerce giant also stopped selling certain products from Nest, a company under Google's parent Alphabet. "Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV," Google said in an email on Tuesday.

Go ahead, hit that BUY NOW button. Procure that sweater or TV or pillow that looks like a salmon fillet. Hit that button and fulfill the purpose of a hardworking warehouse robot. Just know this: the more you rely on online shopping, the more online retailers rely on robots to deliver those products to you. Other robots scan barcodes to do inventory.

On this busy Cyber Monday, one of Amazon's busy distribution centers show how they manage to keep up with the holiday rush. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has staked its brand on putting the customer above all other things, and the company's mission is to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." From its heady days as an online bookseller, Amazon has always sought to use the Internet to provide customers with convenience and low prices. Its Prime loyalty program may be the best example of this, as it offers free two-day shipping on millions of items, as well as a slew of other benefits including video streaming, music streaming, access to the Kindle Lending Library, and discounts at Whole Foods, all for just $99/year. Amazon has always experimented with ways to save customers money, but the company's latest move is like nothing you've ever seen.

A KDDI Corp. employee holds a smartphone to demonstrate the company's augmented reality (AR) voice assistant service at the CEATEC Japan 2017 exhibition in Chiba, Japan. Particularly when it comes to customer experience, money talks. When it comes to money -- the CEO decides. So the priorities of the CEO matters -- because what the CEO focuses on grows. And generally there's a lot of pressure on the CEO from the board to make quarterly dividends. With so much board focus on quarterly profits and growth, it's hard for the CEO to truly focus on customer experience -- which involves long-term investments, or being misunderstood by wall street for long periods of time.

Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., said Amazon's retail website doesn't sell competing products like the Google Home smart speaker or Google's Chromecast streaming device. Google also claimed that Amazon's Prime Video lineup of shows and movies isn't available via the Chromecast. It added that Amazon has stopped selling some products from Nest, a connected-device maker that is Google's sister firm under Alphabet. Amazon in October launched a home-security system that competes with Nest. "Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV," a Google spokeswoman said Tuesday.

SAN FRANCISCO – A rare public spat in the technology industry escalated on Tuesday when Google said it would block its video streaming application YouTube from two Amazon.com Inc. devices and criticized the online retailer for not selling Google hardware. The feud is the latest in Silicon Valley to put customers in the crossfire of major competitors. Amazon and Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., square off in many areas, from cloud computing and online search, to selling voice-controlled gadgets like the Google Home and Amazon Echo Show. The stakes are high: many in the technology industry expect that interacting with computers by voice will become widespread, and it is unclear if Amazon, Google or another company will dominate the space.

A Quartz report said Amazon could be destroying more jobs than it generates, thanks to the addition of more robot employees. To say that Amazon is a major employer in the world would be stating the obvious -- the Jeff Bezos-owned company employs more than a million people. In fact, in the last year alone, the company added about a quarter of a million employees to its workforce. Perhaps, the best indicator of Amazon's significance as a bulk employer is the fact that 238 American cities are competing with each other to become home to Amazon's second headquarters, which is expected to generate 50,000 more jobs. That rosy picture aside, Quartz discovered, in 2017 there were a whopping 170,000 fewer retail jobs in Amazon-linked industries including grocery stores, clothing stores and bookstores, compared to the previous year.

File photo: Bots are turning their sights on the season's hottest toys and games, driving up the costs for people, said Sen. Chuck Schumer. Cyber scalpers are helping the Grinch steal Christmas. Bots, sophisticated computer programs used for mass online purchases, have already driven up ticket prices for Broadway shows and top concerts and are now turning their sights on the season's hottest toys and games, said Sen. Chuck Schumer. "Bots come in and buy up all the toys and then charge ludicrous prices a midst the holiday shopping bustle," the New York Democrat said on Sunday. " Cyber bots -- we call them'Grinch bots' -- are expanding their reach and unfairly scooping up the hottest toys your parents can't even click buy.