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Google Removes Amazon’s App Listing from Google Play Search

66 points by ethanhunt_ 12y ago

spacefight 12y ago
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!
- akount 12y ago
  But not allowing that would be blocking all third party installs - one of the good features on Android.
  - dollaaron 12y ago
    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.
    - benologist 12y ago
      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.
      - Aldo_MX 12y ago
        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like AdSense often contain malicious code which redirects you to a website telling: "your version of WhatsApp is outdated, please update to the current version", and after a countdown (or the click of a link), it downloads a malicious apk to your phone.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.
      - _lce0 12y ago
        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?
- 1ris 12y ago
  This is a feature, not a bug.
- magicalist 12y ago
  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.
commandar 12y ago
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.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  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?
w1ntermute 12y ago
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.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lmedinas 12y ago
  probably because they have other Amazon devices (Kindle, fire etc...), because Apps sometimes are cheaper or they prefer to make payments on Amazon.
- notatoad 12y ago
  Amazon also has some exclusives (or temporary exclusives) that you can't get on the play store.
- benologist 12y ago
  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.
  - duiker101 12y ago
    the 70k number is interesting, would it be possible for you to give a rough value in comparison to the Play Store?
    - benologist 12y ago
      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.
arasmussen 12y ago
More like "Amazon broke Google's terms of service and consequentially got removed from Google's app store"
- legomylibrum 12y ago
  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".
- mingfli 12y ago
  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-forced-amazon-to-remove-its-main-shopping-app-from-the-play-store-because-of-its-appstore-integration/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/12/11/google-may-have-forc...
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > 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.
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      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.
      - 12y ago
HarrietJones 12y ago
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.
- what_ever 12y ago
  Do you think Google will launch Fire TV/stick support for Google Play Movies/TV/Music in future?
  - HarrietJones 12y ago
    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.
akshat 12y ago
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.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- fpgeek 12y ago
  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.
zobzu 12y ago
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.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Oletros 12y ago
  Google is not making impossible to install Amazon App Store
novas0x2a 12y ago
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.
- merrua 12y ago
  They leave your package outside your door? That's not ok.

66 points by ethanhunt_ 12y ago

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!

akount 12y ago
But not allowing that would be blocking all third party installs - one of the good features on Android.
- dollaaron 12y ago
  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.
  - benologist 12y ago
    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.
    - Aldo_MX 12y ago
      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.
    - _lce0 12y ago
      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?
1ris 12y ago
This is a feature, not a bug.
magicalist 12y ago
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.

commandar 12y ago

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.

fpgeek 12y ago
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?

w1ntermute 12y ago

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.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lmedinas 12y ago
probably because they have other Amazon devices (Kindle, fire etc...), because Apps sometimes are cheaper or they prefer to make payments on Amazon.
notatoad 12y ago
Amazon also has some exclusives (or temporary exclusives) that you can't get on the play store.
benologist 12y ago
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.
- duiker101 12y ago
  the 70k number is interesting, would it be possible for you to give a rough value in comparison to the Play Store?
  - benologist 12y ago
    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.

arasmussen 12y ago

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

legomylibrum 12y ago
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".
mingfli 12y ago
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-forced-amazon-to-remove-its-main-shopping-app-from-the-play-store-because-of-its-appstore-integration/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/12/11/google-may-have-forc...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > 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.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    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.
    - 12y ago

HarrietJones 12y ago

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.

what_ever 12y ago
Do you think Google will launch Fire TV/stick support for Google Play Movies/TV/Music in future?
- HarrietJones 12y ago
  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.

akshat 12y ago

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.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
fpgeek 12y ago
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.

zobzu 12y ago

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.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Oletros 12y ago
Google is not making impossible to install Amazon App Store

novas0x2a 12y ago

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.

merrua 12y ago
They leave your package outside your door? That's not ok.