Amazon Moves to Fill a Google Gap
January 6, 2011
The articles about Amazon’s up market Android store caught my attention. I found “Amazon Preps Up market US Android App Emporium” spot on. The story said:
Amazon is inviting Android developers to upload their applications for listing in a better class of app store, at a price set by Amazon and only available within the USA. The application store will launch later this year, but developers who sign up now get a free year before they have to start stumping up the $99 annual fee. For their money, developers get listed in a store that reviews every application submitted, and rejects the tat as well as the unstable or inadequately tested, but more importantly Amazon can offer access to shoppers who only dropped in to buy a book.
Seems harmless enough, but I don’t think it is a harmless move and I think this app store marks the beginning of more skirmishing between Amazon and Google.
Here’s why:
- Google, despite a ream of ecommerce patent documents and technical papers, is still breathing Amazon’s exhaust fumes in ecommerce. Amazon is just being Amazon or what I characterize as Bezosly. Moving quickly with only a modest incremental investment required.
- Google has not been able to get much traction for its own app stores. The Chrome app store seems like a close out at a Border’s book store. Not much excitement in my opinion. The Android app store is more lively, but the quality of the products make shopping as risky as buying from a street vendor in Cartagena, Colombia.
- Amazon is hedging its bets. Striking at the Google when it is not laser focused on value added software sales could ace Google out of a potentially hefty revenue stream. If one of those apps takes off, Amazon might step in and engineer a deal. As I said, a Bezosly move.
What will Google do? Gee, I don’t know. Read the book with a similar title.
Stephen E Arnold, January 6, 2011
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