Google Removes Amazon’s App Listing from Google Play Search | Hacker News Reader

Google Removes Amazon’s App Listing from Google Play Search

techcrunch.com

66 pointsethanhunt_36 comments

By and large, Google (and the Google Play Store) play nice with other content distributors. Amazon don't.

I installed instant Video a week ago, and I was astonished at the lengths it went to to enable the Amazon App store. I can see why Amazon may do this, but from my perspective, it was just too dangerous. Instant Video and the Amazon App were uninstalled 10 hours later.

I've a 30 day eval of Amazon Prime. If I could legitimately install an app that had chromecast abilities, I would probably have stayed with Prime. As it is, I'm back to Netflix and the Google Play store.

Do you think Google will launch Fire TV/stick support for Google Play Movies/TV/Music in future?

Well they just launched youtube on Apple TV, so I don't see why not. There's an issue with having to buy the content on a separate platform (See Comixology for an example of this), but otherwise - yeah. I can see no problem with Google providing software to Amazon that allows content to be consumed.

More like "Amazon broke Google's terms of service and consequentially got removed from Google's app store"

Google changed the terms of the Developer Distribution Agreement, I don't believe Amazon was violating Google's terms when they initially put it in the play store. This article has more details: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/12/11/google-may-have-forc...

> Google changed the terms of the Developer Distribution Agreement, I don't believe Amazon was violating Google's terms when they initially put it in the play store.

Whether or not they were depends on what the "primary purpose" of the app was, which is very difficult to objectively determine (since there is no reason that the primary purpose has to be the most prominent function.)

Google changed the terms of the agreement in a way which made them much less ambiguous, which made the Amazon app clearly in violation rather than merely arguably in violation.

Considering the menu option wasn't there for a long time, and was trivially removed from the new app, I don't see how anyone could argue it was the primary purpose.

Well, considering how long they were separate and the little or no user benefit that came from merger of their app store and Amazon's other shopping app (especially post-Amazon SSO), it seems pretty clear that the primary purpose of the merged app was to sneak an otherwise prohibited app store past Google's terms, so...

That's quite a stretch. The purpose of a particular update to an app is not the primary purpose of the app itself.

Amazon weaseled their way around the terms of service, Google tightened the terms in response.

It's shitty on both parts. For one thing it highlights how we're at the mercy of Google's whims. Their terms aren't a bi-lateral contract. Apple's App Store tantrums regularly make the news, but it's clear Google has exactly the same power.

For another thing, it was a pretty stupid thing to try to do for Amazon, and can be interpreted to show how desperate they are.

But Google changed their TOS to forbid the app's actions a little over two weeks after the apps' changes were released. So you could say it's more like, "Google changes terms of service in order to remove Amazon app from their store".

The article says that the diorect link still works, so they were just delisted from search.

I almost wonder if this was Amazon's end-game all along. I was somewhat surprised that they launched Instant Video in the way they did since installing apps within apps has been, AFAIK, non-kosher with the Play Store all along.

I'm not sure what their exact reasoning is, beyond getting to lay blame on Google, but I find it hard to believe that Amazon would accidentally fall afoul of Play Store guidelines.

I think their plan was to see how far they could get twisting the Play Store guidelines using the extra leverage they got from the long-awaited Instant Video app release. From their perspective, the worst case was returning to the previous status quo, so what did they have to lose?

Does anybody even use the Amazon app store for anything other than the free app deal they have every day? I just don't see why a user would prefer it.

There's a few reasons people should use their store:

1) devs can set apps as free and there's almost always some decent stuff available for free / completely free, this is something google actively prevents by forcing free to be a permanent price change

2) you can buy 'coins' to spend on/in apps + games implementing amazon's services also give you coins back when you purchase which can give you a 20 - 30% discount all the time, this is especially great for all the expensive little kids games I get for my daughter

3) as a developer we've done over $70k in sales this year on the amazon store

The only thing it sucks at is being the only store on amazon's devices.

> The only thing it sucks at is being the only store on amazon's devices.

It's not the only store on Amazon devices. You can download and install a bunch of different app stores on any Amazon device. I have Humble Bundle installed on my Kindle Fire and you can install apps from Opera's app store as well via the website. People just don't know about these stores. That's not the same thing as being "the only store".

the 70k number is interesting, would it be possible for you to give a rough value in comparison to the Play Store?

Amazon is much, much smaller (just 10s of millions of us+uk people I think) but keyword optimization alone can get you started whereas play is much harder to get any traffic on, especially for free.

I can think of three reasons I use Amazon's store beyond the free apps:

1. It's a great way to share paid apps within a household without sharing Google accounts.

2. We have one device (a kids' tablet) that didn't come with and still doesn't have Google Play. Even Amazon's store is light years ahead of the one that came pre-installed.

3. Exclusives. For me that's Instant Video, but I believe other people also care about the temporary third-party exclusives (usually games). This reason often provokes annoyance and grumbling because it feels arbitrary and unnecessary, but it is still a reason nevertheless.

Amazon also has some exclusives (or temporary exclusives) that you can't get on the play store.

probably because they have other Amazon devices (Kindle, fire etc...), because Apps sometimes are cheaper or they prefer to make payments on Amazon.

Good. When I traveled out of the US, I noticed my phone battery life was terrible. Inspecting via catlog, I noticed that the amazon appstore (which I didn't actually have installed directly) was hitting an amazon url in an extremely tight loop, and getting a 403 Forbidden every time (you know, one of the errors that means "don't try again without fixing yourself").

My only explanation is that the amazon appstore has some sort of geographic restriction on the server-side, and the app wasn't written to handle that. I couldn't tell which app was actually responsible, so I just disabled or uninstalled every Amazon app, even though I find some of them useful (rapid package delivery notifications are pretty helpful in a city, when your package is probably sitting on the stoop unprotected). Doing so restored my battery life.

Hopefully this means Google is watching for Amazon's overreach now, and I'll be able to safely get my notifications again.

They leave your package outside your door? That's not ok.

Kind of funny to note that the "evil" microsoft never did any of this with the Windows model.

Imagine if Windows would make it impossible to install Steam for example.. unthinkable.

But if its Google its okay.

Google is not making impossible to install Amazon App Store

While this is Google's App Store and they can do pretty much anything they want, having such rules is simply anti-competitive. It is as good as saying that on Google Chrome, they will not allow people to visit Firefox.

Google has a 90+% of smartphone marketshare in many parts of the world, and this is abusing their power. Amazon is not installing malware or breaking copyright. Everything else should be allowed.

Amazon's store absolutely is allowed. Users just have to go to Amazon's website to download and install it for themselves. Considering that using Amazon's store means trusting not only Amazon and the store app, but every app installed via their store (almost certainly including some Google has never seen), this is an entirely reasonable requirement.

And therefore paving the way to even more malware in their very own ecosystem:

"Users who visit this site are asked to take a series of steps similar to what’s required with downloading the Amazon Appstore standalone app. That is, they have to request a link to the app download, then change their device’s security settings to allow for its installation."

Brilliant!

That's what you had to do to use Amazon's app store within an app as well:

> Instead, the first time a user tried to download an app, they were prompted to “enable downloads” if they haven’t already adjusted their Android phone’s security settings to enable downloads from outside of Google Play. Amazon’s app also walked users through these steps making the entire process very simple.

So if you want to use Amazon's app store, either before or now you'd have to turn on "Unknown sources" for app installs. This doesn't change that.

But not allowing that would be blocking all third party installs - one of the good features on Android.

It's a great feature for people who know what they're doing, but you probably don't want all Android users to allow third party installs- it just opens people up to too much risk.

There's no risk. You still have to find APKs to install, if you download from official sources there's no higher risk than downloading from app stores.

Amazon's been recommending + allowing it for years, along with every operating system for decades.

At least in my country (Mexico), the advertisements in several ad networks like AdSense often contain malicious code which redirects you to a website telling:

"your version of WhatsApp is outdated, please update to the current version", and after a countdown (or the click of a link), it downloads a malicious apk to your phone.

I'm completely disappointed, since too many websites use AdSense, and sometimes I can't even check a website, because the redirection is too aggressive.

I understand that the people behind these shady advertisements use aggressive cloaking (ex. only injecting the malicious redirection when you are under a mobile network) to avoid being discovered.

if you download from official sources there's no higher risk than downloading from app stores.

There are tons of malware that ask for shady permissions on Google's app store.. ala battery optimizer -- why Google expose people to such crap?

This is a feature, not a bug.

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