Amazon, please don’t hijack the web on Kindle Fire | Hacker News Reader

Amazon, please don’t hijack the web on Kindle Fire

gigaom.com

66 pointsnextparadigms24 comments

The interesting thing here is that this appears to be done with intents. So it's quite possible the web re-direct is a side effect of a system wide re-direct that sends you to the Amazon app store whenever you would normally go to the Android Market.

The author casts this as amazon re-writing web request when what probably happening is that web request is turned into an android market intent, which is in turn sent to the Amazon app store because the Android market is not supported on the Kindle Fire. I don't think it's as evil as people are making it out to be.

Most likely amazon never even wrote the code that turns the web request into an intent in the first place.

The stock Android browser treats all URLs as Intents; this is by design so apps can catch URLs from their service. Normally, when you hit a URL that an app has registered for, you're prompted for what you want to open it with.

Amazon's broken this behavior; any market.android.com Intents get bounced to the Appstore; other apps aren't given the chance to answer these intents. While it's true that one can't download Market-sourced apps on the Fire, blocking a website for any reason without communicating it is fairly shady. Also; market.android.com is the home of Google's music, video, and book stores; the first two I'm certain would work in the Fire's browser. They're blocking competition to their own stores; I don't think there's any way to defend that as a legitimate action.

> They're blocking competition to their own stores; I don't think there's any way to defend that as a legitimate action.

If intentional, I agree. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they were also surprised by this side-effect of redirecting the Android Market intent. If so, I'd say the right thing to do would be to make sure their browser doesn't raise an intent for http://market.android.com, side-stepping the issue.

Thanks for the details, I am not an android developer so I was not completely sure on how the intent system and URLs interact.

Is it possible that this is just set as the default activity for the android market intent? Ie, what happens if you clear the default intent handler from the settings menu? I suppose that may not even be possible, depending upon how much customization that they've done.

Honestly, though, I don't think there is anything particularly nefarious going on here. I think they are just trying to make the experience more seamless, since I'm sure many users would be confused by hitting the Android market site and then being unable to use it from an "Android" device.

I suspect you're right. The easy way to test this would be to sideload a browser that doesn't raise intents (e.g. Firefox) and see what it did with market.android.com

Not cool. For this to be defensible as "curating the device for an inexperienced user" (see comments on linked article) the behavior would need to be:

- display a modal dialog explaining that the device does not support downloading/installing apps from the Android market, and that the Amazon market contains apps for the Kindle Fire

- dialog includes "no really, do what I say" option

- dialog includes "do not offer to redirect me away from Android market in the future" option

Anyone know if they Amazon is actually hijacking "http://market.android.com/... " links, or are they just taking over the "market://..." url protocol handler? Huge difference.

I had the same thought, and I tested it; I believe (but am willing to believe that I am wrong, as I didn't watch the network traffic itself) that it is actually hijacking the http(s):// URL.

What I did: I went to one of my websites from the Kindle Fire, and sent the same Accept and User-Agent headers (the only ones that seemed to be special) to https://market.android.com/; there was no redirect returned: it simply gave me the home page. However, going to that same URL in the Fire browser application immediately loads the Amazon App Store.

I've accessed market.android.com but using Mini-Opera browser.

Isn't possible http[s]://market.android.com redirects you to market:// when you open it from an android device?

That specific question is precisely why I explained that I attempted to use the same User-Agent and Accepts--the only seemingly differentiating headers that are sent by Amazon's Fire service--in a connection to the Android Market to see if it would redirect.

Wow, DISGUSTING behavior from Amazon. Probably violates trademark law as well.

I seriously doubt that it violates trademark law, but you are right, this is disgusting.

Successful Tablet? I don't know if the Kindle Fire is going to make it past the first round of people who bought (even though that was a huge number). It's gotten a lot of bad reviews, and the first people to buy it are often unaware of a products shortcomings.

I'm an iPad 2 user, and can't stand using my Amazon Fire. If one owns and uses both, the Fire's shortcomings are glaring.

That said, if someone says they want a tablet just for watching Netflix and reading Kindle books, and doesn't want to spend over $200 and will never do anything else it, the Fire is the one to get.

People with very limited goals and who don't know better, love it. I recommend it.

(If they want to do anything else, but are price conscious, I recommend the 1st gen iPad WiFi refurb.)

Well, there is the iPod Touch. Yeah, the screen isn't as big as the fire, but that means you can easily carry it in your pants pocket.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here flashed gingerbread on their kindle fire? Further, how does it work?

XDA forums are hard at work: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1309

Basically, they have CyanogenMod 7 running on it, but there are still some kinks that need to be worked out (a few features aren't working yet, video isn't perfect, etc.)

Interestingly, the few times I've used the android market web site from my web browser, I installed stuff on my phone. I should still be able to do that from a kindle should it be allowed.

Right, but that would allow you to see and (gasp!) install apps that Amazon doesn't want you to install on the Fire.

does author realize that you can turn off web browser acceleration in Kindle thus eliminating all their complaints?

FTA:

> The browser does redirect any Android Market requests to the Kindle app store; even if you turn off the accelerated browsing feature that routes traffic through Amazon’s servers. That means this hijacking isn’t done via the cloud, but instead is hard-coded into every Kindle Fire.

Old news, you can sideload any apps, move on.

You can't sideload apps that you don't know about.

The issue is that, using a Kindle Fire, it is impossible to see the Android Store's website. If Apple or Microsoft were to make websites impossible to view, it'd be rightly called out as censorship. Similarly, if Google were to make Amazon's online app listings impossible to view on stock Android installations, it would be censorship as well.

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