WSJ has an article today explaining how Amazon is planning to use it's own cloud to help add behind-the-scenes power to the new Fire tablet. Amazon has essentially made a shift in the tablet market by creating a "thin-client" tablet which uses the cloud to do most of the processing and the device to simply render what's needed. Seems efficient - and keeps the price of the Fire under $200. Sounds great right? The article goes on to raise privacy concerns, so as your Fire is rendering websites via Amazon's cloud - amazon is collecting all that data, gaining huge insights into where people are going, buying, etc. Additionally, there may be costs to amazon to apply the cloud computing power on a large-scale to massive amounts of Fire users.
The real interesting development here is the obvious shift and reliance on cloud computing. Apple is introducing it's cloud services in a limited way, Amazon is linking it directly to devices - but it all goes back to benefit to consumers, but also how the cloud gives these companies access (via privacy policies that no one reads) to the user's data - music habits, purchasing habits, browsing, etc - all this is collected already via other mechanisms - but the web is tightening so that any action a users performs on any of their devices (phone, tablet, PC, TV, DVD player, Wii, etc.) is ultimately obtained by a handful of companies and used for future commercial gain.
No comments:
Post a Comment