So if your default search engine in firefox is duckduckgo, but you're currently on google.com/maps reading reviews of a car service, firefox should use google for your next search request?
This is a bad comparison. There's only ever one voice search button on the remote, but there are multiple easy-to-click search bars when you're viewing maps.
IMO, even if I had Spotify on a Roku, I would be fine with this change. It's not difficult at all to press the home button and then the search button to signal you want to search outside of YouTube. A big chunk of YouTube's utility is that it has music videos.
Shouldn't it be up to Roku, not Google, to decide how their product experience works?
LGs TVs have a prominent omni search button. If you’re in the YT app and use the omnisearch it searches across all content services you have connected. It’s an amazingly useful feature and makes the TV experience actually feel integrated. First time I’ve been happy with a “smart” TV experience.
It would be up to Roku if Roku were willing to support Google with resources for developing their YT/YT TV apps.
They literally have no power beyond acting as a gatekeeper for their users. Their omnisearch (which was awful, at least the last time I used it) is a major part of their strategy to try and guide users towards content they profit from.
Given that it's Google's job to guard the UX of their Roku apps, I think it's 100% reasonable for them to tell Roku to add HW support for new features and not gimp search inside the YT app.
I could see this argument if a search for music would lead to a search for (say) a music video. But the idea, as I understand it, is that a request for music to be played would instead be routed through YouTube Music. Even if I'm in the YouTube app, I'm not going to want my music search to go through YouTube Music -- I'm not a subscriber.
I'm not sure exactly what qualifies a music search as a music search and not a search for a music video. The entire point of YT Music on a smart TV is that it's virtually indistinguishable from the default YT app.
it's more like asking "if I press ctrl+L in google.com/maps, should it focus the browser's search or the app's search" - in which applications currently can override ctrl+L to focus their own search bar.
So if your default search engine in firefox is duckduckgo, but you're currently on google.com/maps reading reviews of a car service, firefox should use google for your next search request?