Amazon survey points to renewed interest in a desktop web browser

[Alfonso Maruccia]

The big picture: Amazon is seemingly interested in bringing a new browser to its users, which could improve the company's business both in the advertising and e-commerce markets. For now, Amazon has just sent a selected number of users a seemingly generic survey about web browsers.

Amazon may be thinking about a new browser for desktop and laptop users. A recently circulated survey from the Seattle-based corporation wants to understand what customers "value about current web browsers," which can be easily interpreted as an effort to learn users' preferences to build something new(ish) in the already crowded web browser market.

Amazon's survey about web browser was active until March 19, with the company asking recipients about the PC system they used most frequently (Windows or Mac), the browser they had on said system, the number of daily hours spent within the browser window, and the number of times they experienced issues in dealing with tabs.

Amazon also wanted to know what was the most popular activity done in a browser among social media, entertainment, productivity, news, and (of course) shopping, or if users had downloaded a third-party browser on their desktop system.

Hmm, is Amazon thinking about making a web browser? I'm not sure how else this could be interpreted. @DanaMattioli pic.twitter.com/TNwgIa37qT

— Nicholas De Leon (@nicholasadeleon) March 13, 2023

The most telling part of the survey asked users to rate the importance (on a scale of 1 to 5, just like the five-star voting system in Amazon's own product reviews) of advanced features like blocking third party cookies, password suggestions and management, enhanced privacy options like VPN and "built-in adblocking," text-to-speech conversion, add-ons, tab organization, and data synchronization between desktop and mobile devices.

At the end of the survey, Amazon asked users to "imagine that there is a new desktop/laptop browser" available, and to rate which feature would convince them to download such a new browser among faster loading times, "stronger" security and privacy features, AI-related features, add-on support, and so on.

If the survey leads to an actual product, it would be Amazon's second foray into the browser market after the Chromium-based Amazon Silk. Rather than being confined to Kindle, Fire and Echo Show devices, the new browser would have to wrestle market share from Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and the many other third-party browsers available on PC today.

Amazon's renewed interest in the browser market could have several explanations, considering the company is essentially drowning in a trove of precious data about users habits and shopping preferences. Amazon could be interested in experimenting with new ways to profile and track users now that Chrome is about to retire the third-party cookie mechanism, or it could even decide to further push its involvement into the advertising business after amassing $38 billion in revenues in 2022 alone.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98034-recent-survey-hints-new-desktop-browser-amazon.html

 

[yRaz]

I want a stable browser with an ad blocker that doesn't track everything I do on the internet. I'm not even against data collection, but it's my data and I should be able to sell it if I so choose to whoever I choose. If my data is so valuable then I should be able to profit from it. I know many people are worried about privacy for privacy's sake. I want privacy because I don't like people taking something of value from me and selling it. It's a very fine line between data collection and stealing

 

[mrvco]

The last thing this world needs is another chromium-based browser in sheep's clothing.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Amazon can not even gate keep it's online store very well
Do you want a browser with all these beautiful features ( heh heh )
Download this front to Amazon with add on search and outside tabs

Amazon are dreaming - they got Alexa wrong - most don't use it to buy things.

The already have fire devices - kindles with adverts - work on making those a great buy with your store front

No one is going to use this - People still complain about Epic and you get a free game every week

 

[VariableSpike]

If its not another Chromium based "browser" then maybe, but then again it's amazon, so we'll eventually find out they couldn't give a rats *** about the Web browser and just want a feed of info from people for advertising, or making a new ad platform like Google's or some bs

 

[bviktor]

I want a stable browser with an ad blocker that doesn't track everything I do on the internet. I'm not even against data collection, but it's my data and I should be able to sell it if I so choose to whoever I choose. If my data is so valuable then I should be able to profit from it. I know many people are worried about privacy for privacy's sake. I want privacy because I don't like people taking something of value from me and selling it. It's a very fine line between data collection and stealing

Your "profit" is the browser being free, while costing millions to produce, obviously.

 

[yRaz]

Your "profit" is the browser being free, while costing millions to produce, obviously.

Mozilla makes plenty of money on free products through the Mozilla foundation. There are plenty of free products that are not exactly in it for the money. WinRAR makes money on it's corperate licenses but it's free to consumers.

There are also people who can't buy a product even if they want to. We pay for Windows so why do they need to make money on my data? This whole data collection and subscription services being a business model is a relatively new thing.