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Amazon caves in, will remove ads from Kindle Fire for $15 fee
- cypher517 14y agoThis makes sense because the product is free so of course it would need to be supported by ads. Oh, wait...
- crag 14y agoReally. I mean, now I have to pay to not receive ads on a product I already paid for?
- mikedouglas 14y agoYeah, someone should alert the newspapers. Oh wait...
- dillona 14y agoAre you suggesting we should look to newspapers for sustainable business models?
- yo-mf 14y agoAre you suggesting there are no major online content publications and blogs that do not have ads plastered all over their sites like print-based media?
- dillona 14y agoNot that I pay for. I'm not paying for a product with ads (especially intrusive ones) in it.
- 1123581321 14y agoWhy do you think ads are so expensive? If an eighty dollar Kindle has ads, you think the Kindle should be free, so the ads are worth $-80 to you. I don't see an economic justification; is it a personal grudge against advertisers?
- TheAmazingIdiot 14y agoNot quite. It's more of a perception problem. What Amazon did was say the following: "You can buy our hardware, and deal with the ads. You can pay us even more money to get a better experience." That is a bad message for subsidised hardware. The real cost is hidden behind a 'pay us more money for a better experience'. Instead, what they should have done was say the following: "Our hardware costs $X, but you can get it even cheaper if you agree to minimally intrusive advertisements!" And on this route, you can also offer the option to 'buy' off advertisements as well. Make this part easy. Don't piss off the user. They should have turned that negative into a positive. Make it the users choice to opt in to ads.
- dillona 14y agoI'm not sure I understand what you are saying. I never said the Kindle should be free. I see no issue with paying for it, and I even pay extra for the ones without ads. This is because, as I said, I do not personally want to pay for a product that also contains advertisements.
- 1123581321 14y agoWhat is a Kindle with ads worth to you? I assumed you meant it was worth $0 which is not the case.
- heyitsnick 14y agoSo you've never bought a newspaper or magazine? Bought a ticket for a sports competition? Pay for a TV subscription? Watched a film with product placement in it? Ever seen product advertising in an aeroplane? Ever bought a paperback book? They all come with adverts for other book at the back, loose-leaf inserts etc. The concept of partly subsidizing the cost with additional advertising is hardly a new business idea. It would seem almost impossible to never pay for a product with ads as you claim.
- asdfaoeu 14y agoYeah, because newspapers are just dying out because they sold papers with advertisements. Nothing to do with that web thing, right? BTW can we drop the sarcasm? Doesn't seem like there's any reason you can't sell a product subsidised for advertising.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoJust because newspapers are not doing well in general does not ipso facto make all every facet of their business model wrong. Dying industries are usually doing things 80% or 90% right - otherwise how did they become the powerhouses of old? But it's the 10% or 20% that's changed from their heyday that's killing them. I don't even have an opinion of ads on the Kindle Fire. I just think the argument you're making is fallacious.
- recoiledsnake 14y agoNewspapers have been around for much longer than any dot coms. How many dot coms do you think will be around in 200 years?
- dmoy 14y agoThis is a worthy point. Newspapers are also products that you buy (typically, for the higher end ones at least) that are also supported by ads. Other such products exist, such as cable television, dvds and movie tickets with pre-roll ads, hulu plus, etc.
- orijing 14y agoAnd TV
- phaus 14y agoAmazon started making cheaper versions of kindles that were subsidized by adds. They added it as an option to drive prices down as much as possible. My guess is that the add supported versions were so popular that they wanted to stop selling the more expensive option. It was still a bad idea not to have an option.
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- heyitsnick 14y agoOne perspective is you pay to have the adverts removed; the other is Amazon sells an optional lower-price kindle at cost and subsidizes it with advertising.
- erreon 14y agoThe product is discounted compared to other devices in it's range and they did that by showing ads on the lock screen that is often unused by users. In the past Amazon's kindle ads have been quite tasteful and non-intrusive.
- veyron 14y ago(not a kindle owner) Can someone with a kindle explain exactly how the ads work and why they would be offensive? From what I heard they just show up when you aren't using the device.
- nickm12 14y agoI don't know how the things work on the Fire, but in the ad supported e-ink kindles the ads are fairly unobtrusive. They appear on the rotating "screensaver" images (so you see them when you first pick up and start to use the device) and also as a banner on the home screen. They don't appear when you're reading books or otherwise using your Kindle. The ads I've seen were pretty tasteful too. No "one weird trick" belly fat ads or stuff like that.
- Tichy 14y agoI only had a Kindle Touch for a brief time but I seem to remember that there were some ads that I thought were not so great for kids. The kindle would just lie around in the flat, so kids would get their hands on it, too. Not so great in that they featured some mildly erotic or violent images (I don't remember exactly unfortunately - it certainly wasn't that big a concern, but it is worrying since you can not control what images will appear).
- iza 14y agoThe banner on the home screen is pretty annoying.
- icarus_drowning 14y agoI barely notice it, especially since, reading books, I rarely visit the home screen.
- adrr 14y agoBecause someone of us are sick of seeing ads. (Kindle owner but mine isn't ad supported).
- tednaleid 14y agoI think this is a smart move on Amazon's part (even if they feel slightly forced into it). I currently own a 3rd gen kindle touch with ads and preordered a "paperwhite" kindle with ads earlier this week. It's quite likely that I would have never bought either kindle if I didn't know that I'd have the option, after purchase, to pay the difference and get rid of the ads. This way, I can see how bad they are and judge for myself if I'd rather go ad free. Having this option on the latest Kindle fire would make me more likely to purchase the version with ads initially, as it's a lower price and I know I've got an "out". In the ~9 months that I've owned the kindle, the ads haven't been offensive or obtrusive so I've never bothered to get rid of them (and I refuse to watch cable TV because the ads bother me too much).
- edderly 14y agoStrange, I ordered a Paperwhite on Thursday and they charged extra for 'without special offers' (which I opted for). I'd assume that they would do a similar thing with the Fire.
- sliverstorm 14y agoWhat this is, is the option to remove "special offers" from a device with them, after purchase.
- Spooky23 14y agoCaves? I bet $15 is more valuable than the ads for most users. I wouldn't characterize this as Amazon "caving" in!
- batgaijin 14y agoLetting people opt out of seeing your advertising makes your advertising worth much much less. The people who don't mind spending $15 to not see ads are basically the perfect demographic for expensive stuff. Also, screw Amazon.
- joelrunyon 14y agoIs the last part of your comment really necessary? The first half of your comment was perfectly fine as it was.
- batgaijin 14y agoPaying to remove advertising is a slippery slope. I will not tell my children about the era of 'premium electronics' that didn't scream advertising when you weren't actively using them.
- joelrunyon 14y agoIt's a $69 electronic device. It's hardly a "premium electronic device.' I know it's en vogue to scream "screw this company" when upset with it (re: the recent paypal incident), but given Amazon's broad range of products and services, saying "screw amazon" over a $69 device is a pretty heavy indictment.
- dangrossman 14y agoThis announcement is about the Kindle Fire, not the Kindle. Kindle Fire is their line of $159 to $499 Android tablets.
- pook1e 14y ago
- yajoe 14y agoAmazon didn't cave, this was just miscommunication with a few shills weighing in to create FUD. There was always going to be a way to opt-out. Amazon wants to make customers happy. How to think of LCD ads: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4490562 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4490562 How ads work: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4490590 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4490590
- tzs 14y agoHow is this not caving? Amazon explicitly confirmed to both CNET and Engadget that there would be no option to opt out of the ads. Then a bunch of negative stories appear, and now Amazon says there will be a way to opt out. That's pretty much a textbook example of caving.
- yajoe 14y agoI know about the stories and how looking at them for narrative looks like a change in POR, but who from Amazon confirmed it? They never named names because controversy sells more eyeballs. And because of them we had to make opt-out more prominent. It makes me wonder about all the other stories I read. I'm on the engineering team that makes KSO, and we have had opt-out throughout the release.
- honestcoyote 14y agoI don't see it as caving because removing ads for cash is already the case at Amazon. For existing ad supported Kindles, you can pay to have the ads removed. The cost, for my mom's older subsidized Kindle 3 model, is $20. So the newer, more expensive Fire's will be a bit cheaper to go ad-free. Interestingly enough, there's an option I hadn't noticed before for activating ads on my unsubsidized Kindle. However, I don't get any sort of cash or freebie for doing so.
- f055 14y agoI find all these stories weird, since on the day of the keynote I went to check buying options for Kindle Fire and there was definitely a way to buy it without "special offers", at $15-20 more the original price. What gives?
- denzil_correa 14y agoI see no mention of the duration for which this fee is paid for. Is this $15 fee per year, per month or lifetime?
- pook1e 14y agoI assume it's the same as the Kindle, where you pay a one time premium on the device.
- A1kmm 14y agoThe problem with making a business model rest on paying to remove anti-features in a product is that once you have sold the product, you don't own it any more, and you are inviting competitors to remove the anti-features for a lower price. Expect competitors who will sell, say, a $10 program that will disable the ads by rooting the phone and installing an alternate image without the anti-features.
- d0de 14y agoAt the $15 price point, the only other price point Amazon should worry about is $0. I would imagine few people would go through the hassle and risk of finding and trusting a third party software to remove the ads to save $5 or $10
- billpg 14y agoDon't think of it as a fee. Think of it as a $15 discount in exchange for having the ads.
- salman89 14y agoDoes a $15 fee mean that Amazon puts the value of ads for a customer over the lifetime of the product $15?