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The most interesting thing in the new Kindle Fire, one that could have long-term impact on the tablet and the mobile space, is not the hardware or the re-engineered Android OS in the device; it is the browser. We are talking about Silk. Amazon is expected to sell more than five million pieces of Kindle Fire, and that means there will be five million active users of Silk. The number may not seem large, but for the time being it is enough to give Amazon a substantial stake in the browser space.
The power of Silk
Like the Android OS that runs on the Kindle Fire, the browser, Silk, too has been created on an open source base. The Silk is built on WebKit, an open source platform. In fact it is unlikely Amazon would have entered the browser market if theyd had to build a browser from scratch. Many analysts believe that open source OS is the real force behind the rising competition in the mobile devices space.
Silk could turn out to be a next big thing in the browser arena, as it relies on assistance from Amazons formidable cloud computing service, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to crunch the web down to a manageable size and zap it to tablet users.
So when a Kindle Fire user clicks on a link, the browser passes the request to EC2, which fetches all the page elements, boils them down so they won't be so taxing on the tablet's limited hardware and network abilities, then transfers the data to the tablet itself. This brings about a much needed speed boost. There is no doubt that mobile browsing could do with some speed. Amazon certainly deserves the credit for coming up with a browser that seems to be on the right track.
Privacy issues
The only problem is that because of the usage of the EC2 technology, Amazon will have to be the middleman in everything that the user does on the web. It could potentially have a valuable view of what any user does on the web. This has raised some privacy related concerns, which might be quite valid. But it is also a fact that Amazon is a responsible company and they would not do something as stupid as misusing user related data.
The company has already started making the right kind of noises about usage data being anonymous and stored in aggregate.
However, it is also possible that the data collected could be a way for Amazon to subsidize the cost of the device, which according to recent report from IHS costs about $219 to build and is retailing at a loss of little over $10. The sky wont fall down for users if Amazon has their browsing data. Our average Internet service provider already has access to such data, and the mobile Opera Mini browser uses a similar technique.
Amazon has big plans for Silk
On last Wednesday, while Jeff Bezos was unveiling the Kindle Fire and its new Silk browser, Amazon employees were busy buying up about 500 different Website domain names related to the Kindle Fire and Silk. All of the purchases seem to be defensive, but a few of them hint that Amazon may have broader plans for its Silk browser. Registrations for silkontablets.com and silkonsmartphones.com are certainly indicative of a broader support.
The thing is that Amazon could have simply shipped any number of browsers on the Kindle Fire yet they decided to create their own. Why? One of the reasons is that there isnt any browser in the market that can place emphasis on consuming content and media tied specifically to Amazons cloud computing interface.
The second reason could be that Amazon thinks that the Silk browser could grow into an OS. It is not unthinkable for a browser to expand in scope and become an OS. Google has been trying to bring out devices that are running Google Chrome OS. It certainly makes sense for Amazon to further expand the scope of Silk.
It is certain that in times to come Amazon will place the Silk browser in other mobile devices platforms like Android, Windows, etc. The company is intending to create an ecosystem that is firmly tied to its cloud based services.
These days it has become common for most users to have more than one browser in their PCs. Perhaps the tablets and smartphones in future will also have more than one browser. Mobile users will use multiple browsers to get differentiated experiences with services offered by companies. For the moment the Silk browser is only available on the Amazon Kindle Fire, but there's no doubt that we will see the service come to more devices soon.
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