Whoosh!

"Solution: Go back to the gift cards with a $250 Apple card to help they can buy the only device that they will not be frustrated with."

The guy wants to combine walled-gardens and fails. The solution is not to dash to another walled-garden where the guy will immediately find that it too is not compatible with one of his walled-gardens of choice.

When all the spoilt brats are hoarding their toys, don't whine about not being able to combine the Action Man belonging to one of them with the Barbie belonging to another. Just go and hang out with some decently behaved kids instead.

Re: the iFan Simpleton Solution

I respectfully suggest that you take your $250 Apple card, roll it into a cigar shape, then use it on yourself as a suppository*.

* - Means 'Work it up your dirtbox' (just in case you are not a real doctor and don't know what a suppository is).

Indeed

drtom, Tetractys, anamik, sykottik and no doubt others all felt the need to register (and all within 30 minutes of each other!) to tell everyone that they either now won't be buying a kindle Fire presumably on the basis of this one article, or are returning the Kindle Fire they've already bought.

Do astroturfers really have such little respect for us now that they don't even put in the basic effort anymore?

Great for the average consumer that isn't it?

It's like saying to a person who has just bought a car that they can access the ECU with a special cable and tweak the settings. Great for geeks but your average consumer struggles to replace their IE browser with something else.

Shouldn't he write an open letter to Larry Page?

The article sounds like the author was under some wrong impressions and clearly does not understand how licensing works and what platforms mean. Kindle fire is a fork of android, as such it is not Google's platform. It seems Amazon would have had to pay Google for the proprietary Google Applications, which are not available with the open-source distribution of android. This is Amazon's platform, Google apps have to be available through the Amazon Appstore, just like the kindle app is available through google's marketplace or apple's app store on android and ios. It is upto Google to make their proprietary apps available on Amazon's appstore. Having said all that KF lets you access gmail in the native email client. There are also 3rd party email apps on Amazon's appstore which provide a better interface and access to gmail and ofcourse you can browse gmail on the web browser. KF lets you share stuff on facebook because facebook has opened its API for 3rd party developers, Google+ I am not sure has done that. Google in general aren't every good at providing APIs to 3rd party developers. In short, he should write an open letter to Larry Page.

An open letter to El Reg

Please can you not use any articles from this Greg bloke again as it appears he brings along a lot of astroturfers and his article is generally inane.

Elementary.

"What exactly makes Amazon scary but Google completely harmless?!"

Google told us they were harmless, of course! Sheesh, young people these days.

Easy. We trust Google, we trust Amazon less. It doesn't need to be a logical or rational choice, that's just how consumers are. We never trust any of them completely, nor do we ever not trust them at all. If they have something we want, we'll trust them.

"Easy. We trust Google, we trust Amazon less. It doesn't need to be a logical or rational choice, that's just how consumers are. We never trust any of them completely, nor do we ever not trust them at all. If they have something we want, we'll trust them."

We trust Google more than Amazon because Amazon is selling things to us, while Google is selling us to other people. There is inherent strain in the relationship where one is trying to sell you something, because we must protect ourselves from "being swindled" by the big bad salesman.

But doesn't that put the onus on Amazon?

Since, after all, they're trying to sell things TO US. Which means we hold an important power: the power to say NO. Google will always find buyers because a person is a person is a person to demographics firms. But for Amazon, they have to make sure they provide things that actual consumers want to buy, not just in the Fire but also in the stuff FOR the Fire. After all, if we look at something from Amazon and pass it up, Amazon doesn't get the commission, so they don't make money. See how that would motivate Amazon?

It just puts the onus on Google!

"Google will always find buyers because a person is a person is a person to demographics firms"

Here is the thing, google's products are successful only as long as there is a need for them. With Fire's price point and the package on offer --- easy access to media and a brilliant deal, "google's icing products" are actually icing, that's it. Google will be forecd to make their apps available on Amazon's app store, just like they did on Apple's app store, otherwise Google will miss a very large segment of tablet buyers.

"After all, if we look at something from Amazon and pass it up, "

That is true only if you cannot do the math and reasoning, and are madly in love and are crazy for Apple and Google products. I suspect Google's offerings are only the icing on the cake, the real things win!

Baffled

It baffles me what sort of moron could possibly object to your post and have down-voted it.

Re: Baffled

Good grief Chris. I know it is early on a Monday but wake up man. He didn't mention WHAT article or WHICH author. This isn't a post. It is a BOT getting in a 1st "relevent" post to try and get around the spam detectors.

I believe the downvotes are for the astroturfing dear chap. At least, mine is.

Why on earth would you register an account just to emit that bland nothing?

I assumed it was his Mum.

I found the article in the style of a letter pretty irritating myself.

But I do have some fine trainers for sale.

It's Google Not Amazon

Exactly right, the lack of Google apps on unlicensed Android implementations like the Fire is a Google restriction not an Amazon one (though I'm sure in this case Amazon are quite happy to not be allowed to install them).

Android itself is 'free' and open source but the Google store and other Google apps are not.

Inverted

If 'inverted' means upside down not 'left to right and upside down' I suggest an easier solution would have been to turn the device top to tail!

Or possibly google.

Or, possibly, Samsung.

You can access gmail via the included email app, that's what I did and it works beautifully.

I don't believe the problem is actually *reading* your gmail. I suspect you could do that by using the web interface. The author wants to load the gmail app.

thanks for clarifying

I do not have a fancy cell phone and have not used an "app" unless you count what came on my gateway laptop so my lack of understanding led to a post that had the author not assumed his readers know what one of those app things is and defined it I would have fared better. Thanks for pointing out the difference.

Your "gateway" laptop

Is that the laptop you used even though the government warned you not to which turned out to be a gateway device? Did the dealer wait till you were hooked on the laptops and then sell you tablets too?

Oh, sorry, I remember, there used to be a computer maker called Gateway...

Correct

That's correct. And it's actually trivial to get the majority of Google Apps installed. But, that doesn't make as big of a story, so...

Non-solution

"I'm sure a $250 Apple gift card"

Don't tell us: if you mention this damned gift card 250 times in Internet forums, Apple will give you one for real. Thanks for the repeat spamming, apparent astroturfer!