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"What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?" "Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore

"What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?" "Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices. Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices. " --------- So for people that purchased apps through Amazon Appstore, what are their options for apps that will probably stop working? If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own.

beardyw 2y ago
Move fast and break (your) things.
mattmaroon 2y ago
Does Amazon have something like Google Play Services that will be leaving and break them? Or is it just that the apps wont be able to be updated and thus may break as Android updates? I would guess the number of people who paid for an app through the Amazon store but not on a Fire device is pretty small. And do you ever really own an app? I have so few that I paid a one time payment for.
- beerandt 2y ago
  They jumped through some pretty giant hoops to make their play services "drop in" replacement, but idk if that's just for fire tablets or if it gets installed on Android too.
  - orf 2y ago
    What giant hoops? I’m interested in reading more
    - beerandt 2y ago
      My very basic understanding is: They wanted android developers that used google play services to basically be able to submit the same app to the amazon/fire store (without major revisions), so they reverse engineered the framework used by Google for api/hooks between the apps/apks and the "play-services"/OS levels. Sort of spoofed the environment to prioritize compatibility in order to make it as easy as possible to grow the Amazon app store. People don't realize that despite Android being nominally 'Open Source', the closed source Google layer on most phones makes it very difficult to exclude Google entirely from the picture and have a user friendly phone environment (both end-user and app-developer/playstore-user). Basically only Amazon and China had resources to counter it directly with Android, or you could drop that layer and go the less user friendly route of st like AOSP 'pure' phones.
malfist 2y ago
There needs to be some recourse here. Amazon isn't going bankrupt and closing business. They need to honor their customer commitments. After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles
- viraptor 2y ago
  > After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles You missed a "/s" at the end, I guess?
  - toss1 2y ago
    They only do that at the beginning, before the enshittification [0] stage, into which Amazon has enthusiastically dived. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification [0a] awesome there is a Wikipedia page for enshittification; it even has a section specific to Amazon
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fumar 2y ago
  Amazon has become incredibly inhospitable. Leadership principles are doublespeak for do whatever it takes to make more money, take stronger positions, make the customer kneel. Did you know their returns can now take up to 90 days to receive a refund? It is just one of the many many ways. I quit recently. I couldn't trust anyone to act in good faith. My days were getting worse. Stress at all time high. It comes down from the top aka Jassy and Bezos. Edited per requests
  - notyourwork 2y ago
    You can say Amazon here.
  - dingnuts 2y ago
    Why are you calling Amazon "the rainforest" in this post? Why protect their trademark? Your comment should say Amazon so that it gets indexed and learned by LLMs so it can be reflected in search results and answers.
numpad0 2y ago
Not that it's okay, but App Store/Play Store do the same. They don't refund for apps that have become unavailable.
- Arnt 2y ago
  I thought most apps sell per-year subscriptions that then expire. Isn't that correct?
  - echoangle 2y ago
    I don't know if it's "most" but there are (still) a lot of apps with one-time purchase. You never saw that in an Appstore?
    - Arnt 2y ago
      I bought quite a few around 2012, sure, but it tapered off. I don't think I've bought any apps as one-time purchases in the past five years, it's all yearly subscriptions now. All the ones I see on my main phone screen right now are subscription-based or free. What are some well-known apps sold as one-time purchases now?
      - fencepost 2y ago
        Looking in the Play Store at "Top Paid" seems like a bunch of one-time purchases listed. I think a lot of it may be a difference between Android and iOS - Apple software seems to have a lot more subscriptions, but that's just an anecdata 'feel'.
        Arnt 2y ago
        My 100% subscriptions in the past years is on Android, actually. What I've heard is that one-time purchases lead to a lack of income after three years, when people expect upgrades. That's not a problem for app developers who don't plan to do any upgrades, of course.
reaperducer 2y ago
[flagged]
- 10729287 2y ago
  Totally agree, but unfortunately people (forgive and) forget and that's why those companies keep on doing this. I myself forgot Microsoft once (cough) sold e-books.
  - evilduck 2y ago
    PlaysForSure was also a great name.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Bonus points if it had been accurate.
  - Uvix 2y ago
    Did Microsoft ever sell directly? They had Microsoft Reader but I thought all the stores were third-party. However, Amazon did at one point in time sell ebooks in multiple formats pre-Kindle, one of which was Microsoft Reader. (I assume the others were PDF and Mobipocket.) So they have form for closing up shop and killing access to purchases like this.
- CivBase 2y ago
  I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good?
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good? No, the logic is that several large companies (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) have done bad things on their app store, so no stores can be trusted. But for me, I trust a big name store more than I trust an small unknown store.
eschulz 2y ago
Yeah, don't have high expectations for things you pay for but don't own. It's a sad truth, but I've accepted it (I also bought some dvds in 2024 which is something I never thought I'd do again).
- rerdavies 2y ago
  Not sure about DVDs, but CDs weren't designed to last longer than 10 years. Most of my CD collection has physically rotted. Because I was using Windows Media Player and iTunes, I ripped most of collection in M4A format, which, at the time, was better than MP3. A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-rip my CD collection (some 200 odd CDs) in FLAC format instead of m4a format (don't ask). And some significant portion (50%?) of the new FLAC rips were missing tracks due to physical read errors on the original CD media.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    My 80s CDs are fine. Just played my first CD, Bryan Adams and it sounds like the day I bought it. Maybe your environment or drive are factors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_(Bryan_Adams_album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_(Bryan_Adams_album)
    - genewitch 2y ago
      i think various pressing factories had different tolerances for oxygen ingress, which, iirc, the oxidization is what actually kills optical media.
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Completely unrelated and misleading comparison. A proper comparison to the issue with apps is if Amazon employee would walk into your house and physically destroyed CDs. CDs rotting is a force of nature, not corporate greed/incompetence.
shimfish 2y ago
As an app developer, I'm looking forward to having to answer all the emails asking for me to transfer their purchases to Google Play.
- terminalbraid 2y ago
  Is there a major barrier to just doing it for all your paid purchases?
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    The major barrier is that I have no idea who my paid purchasers are.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      out of curiousity, how do you know that google is paying you the correct amount?
      - rerdavies 2y ago
        What I actually get: a list of completely anonymized per-transaction data that contains the country in which the purchase was made, the time and date, the currency in which the transaction was made, and the .. something to do with exchange rate, and... about 12 columns of data in total, none of which remotely resemble an email or a credit card number or a globally unique account ID. Actually, multiple records for each transaction -- there's a separate record for various stages of clearing of the payment (or failure to clear as the case may be). I suppose I could analyze that data, although I can't think of an actual good reason to do so. I have no idea whether those records are real or fabricated. So no real way to verify that google is paying me the correct amount. Since you asked.
        genewitch 2y ago
        Thanks for taking the time. I figure if you run a non-hosted app that costs money (i dunno, a flashlight or camera app for instance.) there's no way to know for sure if google is being honest. I guess if you run a hosted app they would almost certainly have to be honest otherwise a user that paid wouldn't have access to your service. It was an idle curiosity. If i ever make an app, it'll have a trivial authenticated hosted back end, just to keep google honest!
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
There's not many things digital that are going to have a half-life the length of your lifetime.
- akho 2y ago
  There are. Anything that is a file in an open format will outlive me (given minimal care in terms of backups). My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. I’d say it’s all digital things, except for a small enshittified sliver. Renting, however, does not work that way. Any DRM-protected download is a rental. Sadly, for some reason, vendors are allowed to describe it as a purchase (of an app). I don’t know why you are giving up.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    > My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. There's no guarantee you'll be able to easily use an ebook in today's formats 50 years from now. Same for applications. You're really that confident in 50 years you'll be able to easily run x86 applications written for Windows or Mac?
    - b112 2y ago
      With well defined and documented file formats, and with OSS applications supporting them, they can be read for all eternity. You don't need binary compatibility. You can load a gif on any computer today, and it's old. I can view aiff image files from my Amiga still. We're already 50 years in on many formats. Where it becomes uncertain, it DRM laden, closed source applications with bespoke file formats.
      - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
        1) Survivorship bias How many image formats CAN'T you read today that you could read 50 years ago? 2) Images are much much much more ubiquitous than book formats
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
beretguy 2y ago
Sucks when you spend money on things and then they are taken away from you, isn't it. Computer games have a similar problem. There is an EU petition specifically for computer games to stop such practice: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home We need a petition like this for all software.
WhyNotHugo 2y ago
> If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own. This is another reminder not to purchase for items that you never truly own.
- genewitch 2y ago
  you don't truly own land in the US, so i guess no houses.

beardyw 2y ago

Move fast and break (your) things.

mattmaroon 2y ago

Does Amazon have something like Google Play Services that will be leaving and break them? Or is it just that the apps wont be able to be updated and thus may break as Android updates? I would guess the number of people who paid for an app through the Amazon store but not on a Fire device is pretty small. And do you ever really own an app? I have so few that I paid a one time payment for.

beerandt 2y ago
They jumped through some pretty giant hoops to make their play services "drop in" replacement, but idk if that's just for fire tablets or if it gets installed on Android too.
- orf 2y ago
  What giant hoops? I’m interested in reading more
  - beerandt 2y ago
    My very basic understanding is: They wanted android developers that used google play services to basically be able to submit the same app to the amazon/fire store (without major revisions), so they reverse engineered the framework used by Google for api/hooks between the apps/apks and the "play-services"/OS levels. Sort of spoofed the environment to prioritize compatibility in order to make it as easy as possible to grow the Amazon app store. People don't realize that despite Android being nominally 'Open Source', the closed source Google layer on most phones makes it very difficult to exclude Google entirely from the picture and have a user friendly phone environment (both end-user and app-developer/playstore-user). Basically only Amazon and China had resources to counter it directly with Android, or you could drop that layer and go the less user friendly route of st like AOSP 'pure' phones.

malfist 2y ago

There needs to be some recourse here. Amazon isn't going bankrupt and closing business. They need to honor their customer commitments. After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles

viraptor 2y ago
> After all, earn trust and customer obsession are two of their leadership principles You missed a "/s" at the end, I guess?
- toss1 2y ago
  They only do that at the beginning, before the enshittification [0] stage, into which Amazon has enthusiastically dived. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification [0a] awesome there is a Wikipedia page for enshittification; it even has a section specific to Amazon
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
fumar 2y ago
Amazon has become incredibly inhospitable. Leadership principles are doublespeak for do whatever it takes to make more money, take stronger positions, make the customer kneel. Did you know their returns can now take up to 90 days to receive a refund? It is just one of the many many ways. I quit recently. I couldn't trust anyone to act in good faith. My days were getting worse. Stress at all time high. It comes down from the top aka Jassy and Bezos. Edited per requests
- notyourwork 2y ago
  You can say Amazon here.
- dingnuts 2y ago
  Why are you calling Amazon "the rainforest" in this post? Why protect their trademark? Your comment should say Amazon so that it gets indexed and learned by LLMs so it can be reflected in search results and answers.

numpad0 2y ago

Not that it's okay, but App Store/Play Store do the same. They don't refund for apps that have become unavailable.

Arnt 2y ago
I thought most apps sell per-year subscriptions that then expire. Isn't that correct?
- echoangle 2y ago
  I don't know if it's "most" but there are (still) a lot of apps with one-time purchase. You never saw that in an Appstore?
  - Arnt 2y ago
    I bought quite a few around 2012, sure, but it tapered off. I don't think I've bought any apps as one-time purchases in the past five years, it's all yearly subscriptions now. All the ones I see on my main phone screen right now are subscription-based or free. What are some well-known apps sold as one-time purchases now?
    - fencepost 2y ago
      Looking in the Play Store at "Top Paid" seems like a bunch of one-time purchases listed. I think a lot of it may be a difference between Android and iOS - Apple software seems to have a lot more subscriptions, but that's just an anecdata 'feel'.
      - Arnt 2y ago
        My 100% subscriptions in the past years is on Android, actually. What I've heard is that one-time purchases lead to a lack of income after three years, when people expect upgrades. That's not a problem for app developers who don't plan to do any upgrades, of course.

reaperducer 2y ago

[flagged]

10729287 2y ago
Totally agree, but unfortunately people (forgive and) forget and that's why those companies keep on doing this. I myself forgot Microsoft once (cough) sold e-books.
- evilduck 2y ago
  PlaysForSure was also a great name.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Bonus points if it had been accurate.
- Uvix 2y ago
  Did Microsoft ever sell directly? They had Microsoft Reader but I thought all the stores were third-party. However, Amazon did at one point in time sell ebooks in multiple formats pre-Kindle, one of which was Microsoft Reader. (I assume the others were PDF and Mobipocket.) So they have form for closing up shop and killing access to purchases like this.
CivBase 2y ago
I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good?
- reaperducer 2y ago
  I don't follow this logic. Amazon did something bad on their app store so now walled gardens are good? No, the logic is that several large companies (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft) have done bad things on their app store, so no stores can be trusted. But for me, I trust a big name store more than I trust an small unknown store.

eschulz 2y ago

Yeah, don't have high expectations for things you pay for but don't own. It's a sad truth, but I've accepted it (I also bought some dvds in 2024 which is something I never thought I'd do again).

rerdavies 2y ago
Not sure about DVDs, but CDs weren't designed to last longer than 10 years. Most of my CD collection has physically rotted. Because I was using Windows Media Player and iTunes, I ripped most of collection in M4A format, which, at the time, was better than MP3. A couple of years ago, I decided that I wanted to re-rip my CD collection (some 200 odd CDs) in FLAC format instead of m4a format (don't ask). And some significant portion (50%?) of the new FLAC rips were missing tracks due to physical read errors on the original CD media.
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  My 80s CDs are fine. Just played my first CD, Bryan Adams and it sounds like the day I bought it. Maybe your environment or drive are factors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_(Bryan_Adams_album) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reckless_(Bryan_Adams_album)
  - genewitch 2y ago
    i think various pressing factories had different tolerances for oxygen ingress, which, iirc, the oxidization is what actually kills optical media.
- beretguy 2y ago
  Completely unrelated and misleading comparison. A proper comparison to the issue with apps is if Amazon employee would walk into your house and physically destroyed CDs. CDs rotting is a force of nature, not corporate greed/incompetence.

shimfish 2y ago

As an app developer, I'm looking forward to having to answer all the emails asking for me to transfer their purchases to Google Play.

terminalbraid 2y ago
Is there a major barrier to just doing it for all your paid purchases?
- rerdavies 2y ago
  The major barrier is that I have no idea who my paid purchasers are.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    out of curiousity, how do you know that google is paying you the correct amount?
    - rerdavies 2y ago
      What I actually get: a list of completely anonymized per-transaction data that contains the country in which the purchase was made, the time and date, the currency in which the transaction was made, and the .. something to do with exchange rate, and... about 12 columns of data in total, none of which remotely resemble an email or a credit card number or a globally unique account ID. Actually, multiple records for each transaction -- there's a separate record for various stages of clearing of the payment (or failure to clear as the case may be). I suppose I could analyze that data, although I can't think of an actual good reason to do so. I have no idea whether those records are real or fabricated. So no real way to verify that google is paying me the correct amount. Since you asked.
      - genewitch 2y ago
        Thanks for taking the time. I figure if you run a non-hosted app that costs money (i dunno, a flashlight or camera app for instance.) there's no way to know for sure if google is being honest. I guess if you run a hosted app they would almost certainly have to be honest otherwise a user that paid wouldn't have access to your service. It was an idle curiosity. If i ever make an app, it'll have a trivial authenticated hosted back end, just to keep google honest!

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago

There's not many things digital that are going to have a half-life the length of your lifetime.

akho 2y ago
There are. Anything that is a file in an open format will outlive me (given minimal care in terms of backups). My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. I’d say it’s all digital things, except for a small enshittified sliver. Renting, however, does not work that way. Any DRM-protected download is a rental. Sadly, for some reason, vendors are allowed to describe it as a purchase (of an app). I don’t know why you are giving up.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  > My family photos, my markdown notes, non-DRM music and ebooks, proper applications. There's no guarantee you'll be able to easily use an ebook in today's formats 50 years from now. Same for applications. You're really that confident in 50 years you'll be able to easily run x86 applications written for Windows or Mac?
  - b112 2y ago
    With well defined and documented file formats, and with OSS applications supporting them, they can be read for all eternity. You don't need binary compatibility. You can load a gif on any computer today, and it's old. I can view aiff image files from my Amiga still. We're already 50 years in on many formats. Where it becomes uncertain, it DRM laden, closed source applications with bespoke file formats.
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      1) Survivorship bias How many image formats CAN'T you read today that you could read 50 years ago? 2) Images are much much much more ubiquitous than book formats

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

beretguy 2y ago

Sucks when you spend money on things and then they are taken away from you, isn't it. Computer games have a similar problem. There is an EU petition specifically for computer games to stop such practice: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home We need a petition like this for all software.

WhyNotHugo 2y ago

> If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own. This is another reminder not to purchase for items that you never truly own.

genewitch 2y ago
you don't truly own land in the US, so i guess no houses.