The Amazon Appstore will no longer be available on Android as of August 20, 2025.
Ohh no. What are we gonna do without apps that haven’t been updated in 4 years?
I’m a bit torn.
I want there to be diversity and free choice regarding where I get my apps from, so one less choice only strengthens Google’s monopoly.
As a user, Amazon’s app store was just sketchy.
As a developer I don’t want to be submitting every update to yet another store for every release. I have had users mail me and ask to add my app to the Amazon app store, because their device didn’t come with Google’s play store.
I’m genuinely surprised it still exists! I remember when you were forced to use it to get the Amazon app, or the Kindle app, or whatever. I thought it was gone years ago.
So… All of the millions of Fire devices running Amazon’s bastardized variant of Android… Don’t they rely on that app store since they aren’t part of the full Google suite like most Android devices?
They are slowly pulling out of the Android there too. They’ve deprecated the Amazon shopping app on the fire tablets. Now, selecting that app will open the stock browser to the Amazon homepage. Likewise, there used to be a Amazon Photos app that had decent storage and would sync photos across devices. Now, if you want to look at local photos, you use the gallery app. If you want to look at cloud photos, you use the website.
I don’t know if this is part of their switchover to Vega OS or if it’s just cost saving.
I’m guessing the reason to create an entire store was so they didn’t have to pay Google a higher percentage?
back in the day it wasn’t clear that Google wanted a strong monopoly control over Android. Amazon was just another contender in the ecosystem.
Given how updating apps automatically in the background wasn’t possible until recently, I do think Google wanted a strong monopoly over android. Yes, they allowed device manufacturers to pre install their own store, but they still had to include many of the Google apps to call it Android.
