You can be sure of one thing when it comes to Amazon’s plans to build its own operating system. It will not tell consumers the reason its products will no longer be built on top of Android. What you will see is language like “Our new Vega OS will maximize the streaming experience with a fast state-of-the-art streaming experience” Basically fluffy buzzwords and psycho babble. But the change is on the way and it has been a long time coming.
The change will shut down 3rd party piracy
Since its debut, the Fire TV has been a popular device among the piracy community. It started with users loading Kodi/XBMC onto the devices. As that platform fell out of favor other Android apps and APKs took its place.
While interest in piracy certainly leads to sales of Amazon’s hardware it doesn’t do much for Amazon overall. Fire TV devices, especially the inexpensive Fire TV Sticks, sell at or below cost. Why? Because Amazon is not trying to get you to buy a stick. It is trying to get you to buy everything else in the world from socks to your next TV via Amazon. If it’s a Fire TV powered system it’s even better.
They do this by getting you into the Prime subscription service as you set up the Fire TV in the first place. But if a customer is not interested in using Prime to watch movies, and TV shows they will not sign up for Prime and become loyal Amazon shoppers.
Ironically, when Amazon loses out on the people who buy the Fire TV sticks and “jailbreak” them, they will be able to sell other Android-based boxes and stick for the same purpose. Only then Amazon will have cleaner hands and plausible deniability.
Playing both sides
Until the new system comes out Amazon is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it comes to piracy. Its studio side is part of The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE). And it has been part of the effort to shut down piracy servers and shut down box sellers who specifically advertised “All Movies and TV for Free.” Yet Amazon has to be quite aware of the popularity of its own devices for piracy. It can’t the mountains of YouTube videos that instruct people as to how to turn off protections and side load programs onto their own devices to accomplish the very things ACE was attacking.
The switch to its own system, which will be Linux based, will give the company a chance to put an end to these practices and lock down the system like Roku and Apple TV by only allowing officially approved apps and services on to their streaming platform.
