YouTube Undercuts Amazon on Streaming Push

YouTube and Netflix are the most-watched streaming services in America. But it is Amazon that has come closest to building a streaming version of cable TV with its Prime Video Channels service, which lets Prime subscribers easily sign up for a wide range of streaming services run by other companies. It’s an enormously profitable business, more so than almost any individual streaming service. Now YouTube, too, is gunning for a piece of the market.

The Google-owned company, which last year launched its own version of Prime Video Channels, is undercutting Amazon by as much as 10 percentage points on what it will charge to carry streaming services, say people familiar with the matter. YouTube’s effort, which follows similar but less successful moves by both Apple and Roku to compete with Amazon, demonstrates how big tech companies are jockeying to provide the most complete streaming alternative to cable TV.