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You can no longer purchase Kindle books through the Amazon app on Android

• LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Duh! It was bound to happen, the payment models for Android and Apple are not sensible for apps whose job is to deliver paid content.
  • criddell 4y ago
    Like you allude to, there's more than one payment model on these platforms. Netflix worked it out and I'm guessing Amazon might be able to as well.
    • eruleman 4y ago
      Netflix didn't work it out — you can't sign up for Netflix on a phone.
      • criddell 4y ago
        I thought that changed when they launched Games. https://www.ubergizmo.com/2021/11/netflix-ios-subscribe-through-app/ https://www.ubergizmo.com/2021/11/netflix-ios-subscribe-thro...
    • sgtnoodle 4y ago
      Netflix's stock appears to be doing significantly worse than the market, though, so it seems like maybe they're still figuring some stuff out?
• VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  > Amazon's made it a little harder to buy Kindle books on Android No. Apple and Google have made it a little harder. While I have no sympathy for Amazon usually, they're one of the very few that could actually fight this effectively and finally bring this App store madness under control. I would be very careful about messing with Amazon's money. The whole payments/app store paradigm is on shaky ground anyway. It really will not take much for someone like Amazon to get the anti-trust ball rolling.
  • ericmay 4y ago
    > It really will not take much for someone like Amazon to get the anti-trust ball rolling. Seems like it's in full gear right now... Not that Amazon really has much of a leg to stand on here in these conversations.
  • echelon 4y ago
    The fact that both companies are steamrolling ahead into the payments space should have us all on edge. Once physical credit cards disappear, Apple and Google can start to strongarm local businesses into 15% transaction fees.
    • slater 4y ago
      As opposed to how it's been until now, where corner store merchants are all "rand() % added to debit/credit charges (even tho we're technically not allowed to)" ?
      • cmeacham98 4y ago
        > rand() % added to debit/credit charges (even tho we're technically not allowed to) Citation needed? This sounds like one of those myths like "not accepting cash (for purchases, not debts) is illegal!" - I couldn't find anything searching online to support this claim. Or are you referring to stores that don't advertise this surcharge upfront and surprise you with it?
        • citizenkeen 4y ago
          https://www.merchantmaverick.com/credit-card-surcharges/ https://www.merchantmaverick.com/credit-card-surcharges/
          • cmeacham98 4y ago
            > As of mid-2021, only two states and one US territory don’t allow credit card surcharges. My bad, I wasn't aware of these exceptions. I'd argue characterizing it as illegal when it's legal in 48 states is a little misleading though.
• daenz 4y ago
  Within the past month, I've been unable to purchase Amazon Prime content on my smart TV through the Amazon Prime app, for what appears to be the same reason (Google changes). I have to go to Amazon.com and buy it through there for it to show up on the TV. I've abstained from buying several movies from this increased friction. I wonder how much it's costing Amazon.
  • linuxftw 4y ago
    Roku doesn't have this problem, I highly recommend it.
    • pavon 4y ago
      Over the last several years, Roku has also changed business models to being a rent seeker, to the point where they now derive four times more income from companies paying to put their channel on Roku than they earn from hardware sales[1]. There have been numerous disputes between streaming providers and Roku, with HBO and YouTube being the biggest. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/how-roku-makes-money-5119488 https://www.investopedia.com/how-roku-makes-money-5119488
    • scarface74 4y ago
      Roku is one of the worse offenders of gatekeeping snd strong arming content providers. They have the same arguments with providers that cable providers use to have and also demand a cut. At least with Apple and Google, you can put any app on their streaming devices without having any type of negotiations. You submit it just like any other app.
  • kevinventullo 4y ago
    Which Smart TV is this? I’ve been considering getting a dumb monitor with an Apple TV plugged in, but this makes me think I should just plug in a laptop and do everything in the browser (which I suppose will work until the browsers start taking a cut).
    • daenz 4y ago
• AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
  You won't be able to purchase Comics through the Comixology app either, as of v. 4.0.1. I personally make the majority of my Amazon purchases through the Amazon/Kindle/Comixology apps on my phone, quite frankly because the process of doing it on my laptop requires several more steps (open laptop; open Amazon; re-authenticate with password manager; sign into Amazon; pull out 2FA token to complete sign in; find the thing; check out). For all the security trade-offs with Amazon's "1-Click" buy options, it really works. The loss of revenue is not going to be from things I research and plan to buy (e.g. if I order a new TV after hours of meticulous research), it's going to be the impulse buy's of $2 e-books and the like, where the added burden of logging in will force me to think about whether I really want this e-book enough anymore to finish jumping through all the hoops. Maybe that's a plus in many people's eyes. But it's probably going to take a sizable hit on Amazon's bottom-line.
  • slaymaker1907 4y ago
    You could use your phone's browser instead of your laptop.
    • AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
      That doesn't solve the login headaches, though, and in fact it makes them slightly more headachey as my browser of choice (Firefox) doesn't seem to play well with the AutoFill API on Android.
      • vorejdajo 4y ago
        Store it in Firefox internal credentials database instead?
      • staticman2 4y ago
        Once you log into Amazon on Firefox it should remember your account. (I just tested it in Firefox Android and I am logged in.)
  • michaelmrose 4y ago
• stillbourne 4y ago
  Time to hoist the jolly roger again.
• blibble 4y ago
  don't worry, you can always use your fire phone instead!
• habitue 4y ago
  Do they have a separate version they release through the amazon app store for android?
• anonymousiam 4y ago
  Doesn't Amazon have its own Android app store? Why don't they offer the full version there and allow users to side-load? https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get/amazonapp https://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get/amazonapp
  • dboreham 4y ago
    My guess is : Google lawyers already thought of this.
    • michaelmrose 4y ago
      Probably more likely people aren't used to side loading and if you succeed in teaching people to do this you have also taught them how to avoid paying you as well.
  • nirvdrum 4y ago
    You can. I've done that with Audible in order to make cash purchases. With that said, the app has taken a hit since it's clearly optimized for its primary installation target. I can technically purchase through the app, but prices are buried and sections like "deal of the day" have been removed entirely. Strangely, even though I installed the app through the Amazon App Store, the Google Play Store will overwrite it when an update is available. And then I'm back to a version that can't make cash purchases. It took me a little while to figure out what was going on there. The solution was to disable auto-updates for the Audible app from my Google Play Store account. But, why is Google replacing an application installed by a different source in the first place?
  • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Google makes it aggressively difficult to install third party app stores, full of scary warnings that it compromises the security of your device. They also threaten/pressure any OEM that thinks about including their own or a third party app store. If it was that simple, Epic Games wouldn't have risked their entire mobile footprint suing them and Apple over it.
    • 4y ago
• rit 4y ago
  You also can't buy Audible books through the Audible app. I get that Google wants their cut and Amazon doesn't want to give it, but come on.
• passivate 4y ago
  Grabbing 30% of sales just to run a billing system is absurd.
  • lolinder 4y ago
    Yep, that's absurd, but that's also not Google's or Apple's stance on the fee. Both companies argue that the 30% is the platform fee which happens to include the payment processing fee as a small portion of it. Charging 30% of any and all transactions as an app store fee is also absurd, especially for content apps, but it's important that we talk about this issue in the terms that are actually being used in court. There was a lot of confusion about the implications of the Epic v. Apple decision because of misunderstandings like this.
    • passivate 4y ago
      From the article: " That’s because, while Google expected apps to use Google’s own billing system for purchasing digital goods, it rarely actually enforced the expectation." "But Google is currently cracking down on app developers skirting around its rules. Starting June 1st, Google said it would remove apps that didn’t comply with its billing system rules. "
      • lolinder 4y ago
        Nowhere does that say that Google is charging 30% for their billing system. It says Google has started requiring people to use their billing system in order to use their app store.
        • passivate 4y ago
          That's how I read it. Okay, we just have a difference of opinion, its no big deal.
          • lolinder 4y ago
            It's not a matter of opinion, there's been at least one court ruling on the subject. Have you read the court documents in the Epic cases? Apple and Google are both very explicit that the 30% fee is a platform fee. This is the reason why both of them are offering to remove around ~3% from the fee in countries where they're not allowed to force people to use their billing system. That number is their billing fee, not the 30%.
• kingcharles 4y ago
  Amazon's gotta be wishing they'd done a better job at making their own phone platform now. RIP Fire Phone :(
• a4isms 4y ago
  Something to think about: It is traditional for landlords operating malls to enforce "percentage leases," where the tenant business pays a flat fee plus a percentage of sales, or a percentage of fees with a certain minimum rent. Structurally, Apple and Google are doing the exact same thing. If you want to operate a store in their digital mall, their terms require you to pay a percentage of sales. This is not a monopoly position any more than saying a mall has a monopoly position on its customers. There are other malls, there are locations not in a mall, there is mail order, their is web-based online selling. If you don't like the lease terms, don't run your business there. The fact that Apple and Google have very large malls that are highly valuable places to run a business is irrelevant: Both platforms run web browsers where customers can buy whatever they like, and you can use a "computer" to shop online to your heart's content. This isn't a welcome argument for those of us who are inconvenienced by the fact that when we visit Apple or Google's mall, some vendors choose to promote their products there without selling their products there. This isn't a welcome argument for those of us who want to sell our products there but dictate to the landlord the terms of the lease. But at the end of the day, I believe this is why we have to put the open web first. Making applications on other people's platforms always has been and always will be digital sharecropping.
  • jimmaswell 4y ago
    There are lots of malls but realistically only one app store per Android or iPhone.
    • a4isms 4y ago
      Not as long as those platforms have web browsers that haven't been crippled in some way. If I can buy the tee shirt I'm wearing from ebbetts.com on my iPad, there is more than one store I can shop at on my iPad, it's just that the one Apple provides is marvellously convenient. Ironically, Apple is also in the payments business these days, and again they make it marvellously convenient to "Buy with Apple Pay" in a web browser. But they don't force anyone to offer Apple Pay on a web site, if vendors choose to do so, that's just market forces at work. p.s. And it's an awesome tee shirt! https://www.ebbets.com/collections/negro-leagues/products/montreal-black-panthers-1936-t-shirt https://www.ebbets.com/collections/negro-leagues/products/mo...
• mabbo 4y ago
  What's going to be the real stickler when this finally comes to a courtroom showdown is that Google and Apple are competitors in this space. First, they let their competitors onto their platform without charging extortionate fees. They wait for them to become large and well-used on the platform. Then they change the fee structure so that it's no longer profitable for their competitors to compete on the platform at all. This leads to customers switching apps for their needs. It's abuse of market power from being the marketplace/platform owner. As I always say: a market or platform owner/operator should not be allowed to also be a competitor within it. The incentives get messed up and abuse will always follow.
  • thatguy0900 4y ago
    The incentives dont always get messed up. Every grocery store has their own branded items, they even usually get special shelf placement and sales. Its only the greed of these tech companies that makes it an issue by really going hard on abusing their position
    • plonk 4y ago
      French producers complain of unfair negotiations with large supermarket corporations. Multinationals can win against distributors, but it's much harder for smaller local farms.
    • Zak 4y ago
      Greedy doesn't make sense as a criticism of individual for-profit corporations any more than predatory makes sense as a criticism of a cat. The problem in this case isn't that Google and Apple are greedy; the problem is that there aren't effective competitive forces in their markets to keep them in check.
    • moron4hire 4y ago
      That's probably not the best example. There are a lot of brands on the shelves, but very, very few companies. The grocery chains don't produce those items. Store-brand stuff is more of a white-labeling situation with the goal of capturing more of the price curve. It's pretty much a single producer for all the stuff, occasionally with slight variations so people don't catch wise. If you were to start an independent producer, you'd have a very hard time finding shelf space.
• newaccount2021 4y ago
• fdim 4y ago
  Time to disable auto update and see how long it continues to work! Disappointing outcome though
• awinter-py 4y ago
  fascinating thing that came out of the epic v apple case was the term 'under the bus' (when devs tattled about a violation and reviewers had to ban an app) https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1390415716910764035 https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/139041571691076403... epic v google feels like a giant industry-wide UTB event fascinating to me that goog doesn't feel capable of striking large deals that discount IAP. Desperation about revenue as ad margins shrink? Fear of a stronger court / regulatory stance over platform governance? Can't tell, but would love to be a fly on the wall in these negotiations. Are regulators at the table?
  • colinmhayes 4y ago
    Twitter threads made of 100+ individual tweets should be illegal. How tf is going to actually read all that 280 characters at a time?
    • awinter-py 4y ago
      yeahhh I normally try threadreaderapp but it, too, chokes on the giant ones I think twitter web client is like a big bundle of scroll jank, home and end keys broken, page up / down quickly hit a reloader, ctrl+F only works within the small span that is rendered. (reasons TM for all these things but I hate it) guessing this journalist did it this way to simultaneously take notes on the trial + market the coverage, but yes it's hard to use
    • krrrh 4y ago
      Twitter actually introduced a premium version called Twitter blue that adds a reader mode meant for reading long threads. But the Twitter thread is really it’s own format, and when done well with photos and graphics punctuating the tweets it becomes something more than just a chopped up article. Kamil Galeev’s threads on Russia and Ukraine are a great example of really taking advantage of the format. Here’s a nice example: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501360272442896388
  • navbaker 4y ago
    Had you not heard the term "throwing someone under the bus" before? Must be a regional or cultural thing.
• Antilles 4y ago
  Can Google's Store even handle the number of SKUs that Amazon has? Amazon has to have millions of titles.
• pavon 4y ago
  The situation with Barnes and Noble is even worse. They partnered with Google to use Android on the Nook Tablets, so users could have access to the Play Store and Google apps. Now, because of this change you can't even buy eBooks from Barnes and Noble on their own first-party Nook tablet. Meanwhile, Amazon chose to forgo the Google Play Store & apps and instead created their own app store on top of AOSP for their Fire Tablets, so at least those tablets aren't impacted by this, just third party android device.
  • ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    It's important to remember, if you ever build on a Google platform, they will hands-down always eventually screw you over for doing so. No company is as aggressive at actively hurting their own partners. Loved my original Nook Color and it's willingness to default booting off a microSD card if present. Hopefully with the benefits of partnering with Play completely gone, B&N dumps Play Services and installs their own store again like the old days.
  • tssva 4y ago
    The Amazon App store can be installed and used on third party android devices.
• shmde 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31220553 Use this guide to jailbreak. Its easy, clean, takes like an hour total. I jailbroke my kindle 7th gen using this guide. Tonnes of features, dark mode, add your own fonts, read epub/cbr w/o converting from calibre. Its like my kindle had a Resurrection. Its awesome. Highly recommended.
  • wfhordie 4y ago
    KOreader is massively annoying. You have to set up every book individually, and there's no consistency in the UI.
• Animats 4y ago
  Can you download the Amazon app through F-Droid and bypass Google's annoying Play Store entirely?
  • vorejdajo 4y ago
    Sure, if Amazon decide to open source their app. But we all know that won't happen. Whatever tracking they do will be entirely lost. The data is worth more than the revenue itself.
• havblue 4y ago
  Convenience side, driving people back to web browsers that are platform independent and away from apps is good though right?
  • tired_and_awake 4y ago
    I feel the same way and tend to default to using the browser for things that have app alternatives. There are likely some devices where this will be a problem, but for the overwhelming majority of device users - where there's a Kindle app there's a browser. From the consumer perspective perhaps this isn't a big deal? Are we missing something?
  • colechristensen 4y ago
    Honestly, what's the difference between a web app on mobile and a native app? Web browser tech has gotten so advanced that it seems more like just a difference in frameworks between the two.
    • andrekandre 4y ago
      > Web browser tech has gotten so advanced that it seems more like just a difference in frameworks between the two. on older or lower end devices, or slower networks the difference can be pretty dramatic just as an example, youtube on web vs app on a 5 year old ipad (that otherwise would be totally usable) is pretty huge, same with even banking sites like chase or amex is light and day in app vs web ui performance* *please note i'm not advocating for closed technologies as much as pointing out that web and native still have differences that matter to a lot of customers
      • scarface74 4y ago
        Even on the fastest mobile phone on the planet, apps like AirBnB, Papa Johns, and banking apps are much faster than their web equivalents.
    • gmiller123456 4y ago
      For a lot of apps, the website is better. But there are still some things that an app does better. Mainly either apps that require a lot of data to download once, or apps that require sensors that don't work as well or at all in the browser. Apps working off-line is much less of an issue now, but still an issue. E.g. one app I wrote to let kayakers check the water levels updates in the background, so the data is available when they get out in the hills with no service. Similarly with some of my astronomy apps, by the time you think to use the app, you might be well out of a service area, so a background data update is very useful.
• mcguire 4y ago
  I noticed this recently in the Amazon Shopping app. Yes, you can buy everything except digital books in the app.
• NelsonMinar 4y ago
  We really need more anti-trust action shaping the marketplace for things like mobile phone app stores. Apple and Google both demanding a 30% cut of all sales on their platforms is just awful. And they are literally a duopoly, there is no reasonable alternative.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    Should that also be true for console makers?
• rchaud 4y ago
  Time to bring back the mobile UMPCs of yore that ran full desktop OSes. None of this ecosystem nonsense, run everything in the browser. All this hullabaloo about Epic v Apple, Amazon v Google etc reminds me of how comparatively painless it is to do anything on a proper computer. I've never had a Windows device tell me it can't play Netflix in 1080p because the browser doesn't have Widevine L1 DRM support. Or that my bank website won't work because my computer is rooted.
  • alex_smart 4y ago
    >I've never had a Windows device tell me it can't play Netflix in 1080p because the browser doesn't have Widevine L1 DRM support. Afaik, Netflix does not by officially support 1080p on Chrome on Windows.
  • nikanj 4y ago
    It doesn't tell you, it just plays in a garbage resolution and you have to resort to old forum threads to figure out why
  • focusedone 4y ago
    YES please! UMPCs were ohsoclose to good when they went away. Something like a modern VAIO P would be amazing. Honestly, I hope the Steam Deck and similar reinvigorate the UMPC market. I can't be the only one looking at the deck and thinking UMPC thoughts. Right?
• zuminator 4y ago
  For Samsung users, the Galaxy Store version of this app, at least for now, still allows purchases. Amazon (after checking with Samsung) should publicize this, and stick it to Google just a little bit. While helping out their users, of course.
• LinAGKar 4y ago
  Also seems to affect the Kindle app, not just the Amazon app, which is not mentioned in the article
• dtagames 4y ago
  This is also happening with videos on Amazon Prime! Just recently, many videos have the Buy/Rent button replaced with a "How to watch this video" link that only pops up a box saying, "Visit Amazon.com." Very helpful! I've opted out of several rentals already just from the stupidity of this.