The Fire TV Cube is Amazon's attempt to combine a smart TV streaming box with an Alexa-powered smart speaker, producing a small black box that doubles as an Echo device. The combination of shiny and matt black plastic makes it stand out at first, but the 86mm-wide and 77mm-tall cube is small enough not to be distracting sitting next to your TV. It's essentially a voice-controlled Echo Dot mated with a Fire TV smart television box. The top resembles an Echo Dot with the same four-way configuration of buttons for volume, muting the microphones and an action button, plus a series of holes for the eight beam-forming mics. A light strip at the top front edge shows what Alexa is doing, lighting up blue when listening, or orange with alerts. Ports are in the back for power, HDMI for your TV (cable sold separately), an optional infrared blaster and a microUSB socket, into which you can plug the included ethernet adapter if you don't want to use wifi to connect to the internet.

Google is using YouTube as leverage over Amazon to try and force the world's largest retailer to sell its Home smart speakers, Chromecasts and Nest products. Google has pulled official support for YouTube from Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV devices, meaning that owners can no longer access the video site through a YouTube app. The quarrel originally became public in September when Google pulled YouTube access from the new Echo Show for "violating terms of service" saying that Amazon's implementation of YouTube blocked what Google considered critical features. Now it appears to revolve around Amazon's unwillingness to sell certain Google products. Google said in a statement: "We've been trying to reach agreement with Amazon to give consumers access to each other's products and services. "But Amazon doesn't carry Google products like Chromecast and Google Home, doesn't make Prime Video available for Google Cast users, and last month stopped selling some of Nest's latest products.