Posts by smartashell

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

It just puts the onus on Google!

"Google will always find buyers because a person is a person is a person to demographics firms"

Here is the thing, google's products are successful only as long as there is a need for them. With Fire's price point and the package on offer --- easy access to media and a brilliant deal, "google's icing products" are actually icing, that's it. Google will be forecd to make their apps available on Amazon's app store, just like they did on Apple's app store, otherwise Google will miss a very large segment of tablet buyers.

"After all, if we look at something from Amazon and pass it up, "

That is true only if you cannot do the math and reasoning, and are madly in love and are crazy for Apple and Google products. I suspect Google's offerings are only the icing on the cake, the real things win!

Shouldn't he write an open letter to Larry Page?

The article sounds like the author was under some wrong impressions and clearly does not understand how licensing works and what platforms mean. Kindle fire is a fork of android, as such it is not Google's platform. It seems Amazon would have had to pay Google for the proprietary Google Applications, which are not available with the open-source distribution of android. This is Amazon's platform, Google apps have to be available through the Amazon Appstore, just like the kindle app is available through google's marketplace or apple's app store on android and ios. It is upto Google to make their proprietary apps available on Amazon's appstore. Having said all that KF lets you access gmail in the native email client. There are also 3rd party email apps on Amazon's appstore which provide a better interface and access to gmail and ofcourse you can browse gmail on the web browser. KF lets you share stuff on facebook because facebook has opened its API for 3rd party developers, Google+ I am not sure has done that. Google in general aren't every good at providing APIs to 3rd party developers. In short, he should write an open letter to Larry Page.

You got more than what you paid for

I do not see much sense in whining about a missing native gmail app, when he gets tons of native media apps, single-touch access to tons of stuff at fantastic price. You still have a native email app that supports reading your gmail and ofcourse you can read gmail on your browser or install 3rd party email apps that look better (the other walled garden btw didn't have a gmail app until like very recently, and yet who cares). I would rather have a simple interface to my email and watch/read tons of content at the best price, than fuss over how good my email client looks like.