The Amazon Kindle Fire ships with the Amazon Appstore for Android applications rather than the official Google Android Market. And up until recently you couldn’t even visit market.android.com in the Kindle web browser (or a third party web browser). Amazon would automatically redirect links to its own app store.
On the one hand, if you were browsing for apps on a Kindle Fire, odds are that you wanted to download those apps on your tablet, so this was a good thing.
On the other hand… ick. Imagine if Microsoft or Amazon didn’t let you visit Google websites on devices running their software, or vice versa? A device with a web browser is a whole lot less useful if you can’t trust that it will let you visit any website.
The good news is that the Amazon Kindle Fire 6.2.1 software update which was released this week removes the redirects. You can now visit the Android Market website from your Kindle Fire tablet.
Of course that same software update also kills root access for anyone that has rooted their tablet to install the official Android Market or make other changes. So while you can browser the Market, you may not have an easy time actually installing the apps you find there unless you’re able to install custom firmware such as the pre-rooted version of the Kindle Fire 6.2.1 software.
The Kindle 6.2.1 software update also improves performance, offers smoother scrolling, and allows you to remove recently used items from the tablet’s home screen.
via GigaOm
This decision by amazon makes the Kindle fire a more desirable product. Its about time for manufacturer to stop placing road blocks in front of customers.