Amazon’s introduction of their new web browser, Silk. More evidence to indicate that Amazon is just about the most interesting large company around. Silk was announced on the same day as three Kindle devices, so I didn’t pay attention to it until today. It looks like a much more robust implementation of what Opera Mini now does, with aspirations to expand to all devices.
It reminds me of the introduction of Gmail, in a couple of senses. First, Gmail took an activity that was best performed locally, checking and composing mail on a desktop client, and replaced it with a superior remote experience. Silk promises the same, by rendering pages better and faster than your local hardware.
Also similar is the attendant privacy concerns. Gmail openly reads all of your email and sends you advertising to match it, daring you not to use the service. Lots of people (myself included) immediately decided that the service was worth the obvious loss of privacy. Here, Amazon is quite clear that it intends to monitor and analyze all of your web activity, but argues persuasively that the advantages of the service/application will outweigh your privacy concerns.
I am ambivalent about what this product means for the future of the web, but convinced that it will be a real force.
