Comment by david_allison
2 days ago
> Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices.
2 days ago
> Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices.
Well, it'd better continue to be available, seeing that Amazon's devices don't support the Google Play store...
It might not be "supported", but I thought you could easily sideload play store and play services? You don't even need to muck around with rooting or even adb.
I wouldn't call sideloading the play store and services "easy", especially for Kindle Kids/FreeTime profiles.
Not at all easy. It’s a PITA using all sorts of odd sources.
2 replies →
> Amazon's devices don't support the Google Play store...
FireOS devices aren't certified by Google and so, they do not come with "Gapps" (including the Play Store) preinstalled. Even if they were, Amazon might have some reservations about preinstalling Gapps (which run with higher than normal privileges), effectively letting Google get hands on its user's purchasing habits.
All that to say, this is a business limitation not a technical one.
See also: Google's iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6582494 (2014).
I have two Kindle Fire tablets (they're low-quality as general purpose tablets, but cheap and good for reading comics or books) and both have Google Play on them.
Mind you, I had to sideload it for both of them.
I did that too but it turned out to be just too much trouble. Play store kept trying to update the handful of apps that exist in both Amazon's and Google's ecosystems, and it completely them.