this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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So they want more control over what people are able to install
The more you control something, the easier it is to take your ~~10%~~ ~~15%~~ 20%
I think it's even simpler than that: they want a share of Google's data, and more control about what ads they can show to their customers constantly. Their hardware platforms are okayish and sold for a quite low price, but they monetize it on ads.
Amazon's Fire devices already have this, they don't use Android with Google, they use the fully open source version. They can collect any data they want already
Exactly this. There's no nefarious motive to doing this, because Amazon can already do everything nefarious that they want to do with their current Android-based Fire OS.
I'm actually willing to take Amazon's reasoning at face value for this. They say that Android is too heavyweight and inflexible for embedded IoT devices, and that they want to build something lighter. This makes plenty of sense, and is indeed something that Google themselves have also said as justification for their move to Fuschia for their own embedded devices.
For Linux fans, it's probably a good thing that Amazon has chosen another Linux-based architecture rather than doing as Google are doing and moving off Linux to a different kernel.