Amazon Won’t Let Mobile Apps Use Its Product Info Anymore

@Kynes: Well, regardless, my G1 apps that use Amazon data still work perfectly. So far, my Android apps that use Amazon data have not been affected. Also, it is worth noting that Amazon has "Default" apps on Android devices, such as Amazon MP3...

There may be some pre-approved situations here, and they may simply be using broad and ambiguous language in order to more easily turn the situation to their own advantage, when they see fit.

@shawn_dude: I think it depends very much on the app. The SnapTell app lets you take a picture of a book (or scan the barcode) and it determines what book it is. It then relates info via several sites, Amazon included, and links to them directly. In that case, I think Amazon appreciates the effort.

If the app merely borrows Amazon's descriptions without linking to a purchase option, that is entirely different.

@SuppleMonkey: or they have their own product under development and don't want to give their competition a free leg up.

shawn_dude

@orthorim: huh?

shawn_dude

@torgreed: I almost became a seller for Amazon then I looked at their 'fees' and decided Goodwill was worth more time/effort for me. This is considering I would only sell books. I shop the used marketplace all the time.

Turael

@met2art: One would think that Amazon would appreciate the extension into the iPhone space and think up a way to profit from the situation.

shawn_dude

@JCCrgb: As it should be, naturally.

shawn_dude

@Oldbrass: I think you'll find that the "Buy on Amazon" and "Sell on Amazon" features of Delicious Library are why Amazon hasn't gone C&D on them. There's rules for using the Amazon API, and I'm pretty sure Delicious does their best to follow them.

(Except there's different rules on mobile devices, which they didn't anticipate.)

I have used the Sell on Amazon thing. It was somewhat surprising just how much the Reboot season 3 DVDs were worth on the re-sale market....

I'm not sure about the Buy on Amazon feature, because by the time a book or DVD hits my copy of Delicious Library, I've already bought it... usually from Amazon as it turns out.

torgreed

Not hard to fathom - this is the company who got a questionable patent on 'one click purchases' awarded and subsequently screwed anybody else trying to make a very obvious choice in user experience design.

alinear

This scared me for a second, when I thought my media organizer, MediaMan, might be affected (it's a Windows corollary to Delicious Library, which refuses to develop a Win client).

But I guess, since they're shutting down mobile apps, would it be hard to imagine that desktop apps are far behind?

It still seems like a counter-productive move to me. Sure there's bandwidth costs, but wouldn't you want as many links to your products across as many apps as possible? As others have pointed out, charge some nominal licensing fee to recoup some of the bandwidth (if that's even a factor here).

I'm confused. The app from the app store does not contact the Amazon site directly. I updated my library this afternoon, and the data I entered into the desktop database and which then synced the data onto the phone. Where is the option to directly download the info onto the iPhone?

Does anyone at Amazon realize that the Delicious Library desktop enables users to buy and sell their goods entered into their personal databases onto the Amazon site?

taylors_dad

Bitch move.

@met2art:
I haven't read through all of Amazon's paperwork on the legal use of their APIs, but this seems very specific to mobile devices. If the idea were to prevent uses of their data that did not lead to sales I would think they would have done something that obviously said so. If this was meant as a stop-gap measure it was an unspeakably stupid one.

That's not good. Because what it means is Amazon is now a monopoly. Only a monopoly would pull something like this.

orthorim

@mikeness:
Unless you're talking about an application for a mobile device (and it didn't look that way to me) I don't think that's an issue. Amazon isn't trying to convince people to stop using their APIs in programs. That would be counter productive.

@aceofcakes:
You do realize that a lot of web applications hook into other web applications and rely on their APIs functionality, right? I understand your concern, but this is not some tenuous screen scraping we're talking about. It's one the largest most used APIs in the United States (no idea about worldwide). I'd say your iPhone would be outdated before that API would simply stop working.

and next to disable right clicking to take their 500x500 album art

dfetzer

It seems less like they're shutting it down for competition reasons and more like they just don't want people mooching bandwidth for apps which don't have a link to purchase it.

im.thatoneguy2

@chefgon: That doesn't sound very not evil to me.

Time for Google to step in with a free alternative that ultimately ends up screwing Amazon out of a bunch of business somehow. That's usually what happens in these situations.

chefgon

@mikeness: It's possible that Microsoft has an affiliate relationship with Amazon. In that case, they would be provided with updated API information, and allowed to utilize the content in return for directing listeners to Amazon sales channels.

It doesn't really surprise me that Amazon doesn't want people utilizing their servers and content in ways that don't necessarily directly translate to sales via Amazon.com channels.

I do wonder if Amazon may treat Android-based application the same way, considering the hand-holding between Amazon and Google. So far SnapTell is still able to pull relevant Amazon product data from barcodes and pictures of books that I just tried. I just snapped pics of the covers of Halting State, Spook Country and Snow Crash to test, and all provided Amazon info, as well as a dozen other local and online stores.

Oooh, I wonder if this will affect my DVDLibrary app for Windows 7 Media Center, it pulls data from Amazon as well. As a matter of fact doesn't Windows Media Player too? I wonder if they have multiple APIs for this sort of thing. I also wonder sometimes what the meaning of life is, and why a cockroach fell out of the fishy cracker box when I was so young and easily scarred.

youtube is changing their api once a couple month, and the whole bunch of all kinds of video-downloaders stops working until the developers release a fix, and nobody cares, just because it has nothing to do with iphone.

atenrok

What about licensing? Why don't they charge these companies and make a few bucks, instead of shutting them down?

@Mammoth: Not very nice, but they spend a lot of money on gathering/compiling that data.

spannu

I dont think delicious library was a big affiliate draw for Amazon since the point of the app is to post what you already own. Amazon probably got tired of paying the bandwidth for others to make money off of it.

yoshitoshi

Uh, guys! In case you haven't noticed, Amazon is a SOFTWARE company which happened to sell stuff. Not the other way around. Programmers are gods while the real people toil in obscurity!

There goes the app I was working on!!!!!

ok.. well the app I was planning to work on someday when I get tired of watching tv.

badweasel

I was always a bit amazed the DL could use Amazon without then going all "cease and desist" on them. It's a nice little app and I've used it for a while, but it's gotta be a pretty shaky business plan to be relying on a behemoth just handing over info for free. The music's bound to stop eventually.

Oldbrass

I suspect they were paying these affiliates too much. What better way to make more money than just tell them to piss off :(

scoobydoo

@Mammoth: I know right? I mean, it's like, I don't really care all that much, but still. That's just kind of not cool.

Certainly don't agree but as a business decision I can understand.

While the programs can be convenient, they are essentially worthless when the site changes. Even if it doesn't, it's always in the back of your mind of when this program will stop working because the whole thing relies on one big variable.

aceofcakes

That's not very nice.

Mammoth

Product Advertising API basically is for their affiliate program. They don't want to pay commissions unless someone goes directly from your site.

They also announced that they won't pay commissions on links from Twitter, etc...

rm121976