10-04-2015, 02:41 AM
http://www.extremetech.com/internet/2155...t-apple-tv
Quote:Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, has previously boasted that Amazon Prime customers spend an average of $1,500 per year at Amazon, compared to just $625 for regular shoppers. If that’s true, it means that Amazon Prime customers account for a disproportional amount of the site’s overall revenue — and Amazon has every reason to try to lock them into its own ecosystem. This push explains the increased ad presence on the newly designed FireOS, as well as the generally lower-quality experience on these devices — Amazon is stepping up its lock-in.
This has nothing to do with customer confusion. Instead, it’s a push to create an Amazon-like wall around video content, the same way Apple walls basically everything, and Google locks down Android. For a company that often credits its own operating system as the anti-Google when it comes to not gathering personal information about its users, Amazon is all too willing to enact lockouts that ensure customers have choice but to use its own products.
For a company that squawked so loudly about Apple’s illegal collusion with publishers, Amazon has no problems abusing its own dominant market position to ensure customers are guided towards its own products and away from others. Roku ought to be looking over its shoulder. Netflix would almost certainly already be on the chopping block, if Amazon thought it could get away with it.