September 28, 2011
Today in New York, Amazon introduced Silk, an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. You might be asking, “A browser? Do we really need another one?” As you’ll see in the video below, Silk isn’t just another browser. We sought from the start to tap into the power and capabilities of the AWS infrastructure to overcome the limitations of typical mobile browsers. Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.
We’ll have a lot more to say about Amazon Silk in the coming weeks and months, so please check back with us often. You can also follow us on Twitter at @AmazonSilk. Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about career opportunities on the Amazon Silk team, please visit our jobs page.
The slow load times of today’s web pages are largely due to advertising, cross-linked content, syndication, web bugs, etc. I.e., stuff that the end user doesn’t give a hoot about.
Silk’s architecture sounds like the ideal platform to filter it all out.
But, since Amazon has a vested interest in the capitalization of the browsing experience, I suspect their new browser took great care to make these things even HARDER to filter, not EASIER.
I’m absolutely sure that you are correct – this is a great platform, but it WILL be an advertiser’s (Amazon) dream child.
Still – looks pretty terrific.
A great idea: integrating the gap between desktop and handheld.
What does Silk look like?
apple…you are about to get pwn’d.
How does this effect security? If I login to by bank’s website on the Silk browser, wouldn’t that give Amazon my login information and thereby full access to my bank account. Not that I don’t trust a giant corporation to have my best interests in mind and to keep my data safe…
good point. I would like to know the answer to this.
Interesting… leverages their cloud and most of what we buy is via Amazon so this brings another dimension compared to iCloud – which is also compelling. Wonder what mashup of Amazon and Apple would look like?
Do HTTPS connections pass through this service or are they handed entirely by the device?
Yeah – what Andrew said.
nice
How can we test on this browser without the device? As a developer we need to be able to test in all browsers to ensure our work renders and functions correctly. Will Amazon provide a way for developers to test on SILK?
Here’s a model that might actually work: Amazon probably has no interest in benefitting all computer users just for the heck of it, so what if they built a Mac/Windows/Linux version of Silk, and made it available to all Amazon Prime subscribers?
The browser might ask you to login to your Amazon Prime account when you first launch it, but after that would never bother you again. An added benefit of this would be that you would never, ever need to log in to an Amazon website again. The browser would be your credentials. You would also get the tremendous speed boost in all your browsing, and you’d simply re-up your Amazon Prime subscription to keep your super-fast web rendering. That’s a business model that could work for Amazon and the users.
And why would you pay for it when you have Opera for free?
I’m not saying Justin’s is a good idea for now, but first, Opera is not a terribly well known browser. I would bank on its quality being inferior to Amazon’s current apex technology. Second, Opera doesn’t have anything near the level of resources Amazon does, so its server farm is comparatively limited, which means its two-tier browser solution should not be as effective. Third, Amazon Prime is quite useful for other reasons: namely getting content quickly and inexpensively – if you order enough of it – though that currently really applies to content with at least a physical component. In a sense, Justin’s idea could conceivably be formulated to extend that Prime advantage (quickness of receipt) to electronic content.
At any rate however, I think it’s good for Amazon to concentrate on supporting the browser exclusively on their own hardware first. That should boost sales while allowing the company to have a managed unveiling of the Silk technology, all while not needing to service bugs occurring on untold combinations of different hardware, as exists in the general PC market.
‘Would be nice to see the tech in action though.
Wow! This is awesome.
Apparently the old way takes 1337 ms to load a page… nice
I noticed that too, chuckled a bit
How does your processing differ from what is done in the Opera browser?
Show, not tell. This is engineer porn, but where is the video for the consumer?
Seems to make sense. Look forward to trying it out!
Me to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Awsome! It was time for something great from pioneer Amazon.
The Apple fell of the tree. Apple is being sent to the dust bins of history…
Good luck with a great product (at an affordable price)!
Uhh, what makes you think that? Let’s not get carried away.
Sounds great.
Opera Opera Opera
It`s all old stuff that opera turbo / mini already is doing for months / years!
Why did they just didn`t integrate opera browser in Kindle Fire!? It would be cheaper.
Hey! Opera Mini with much much much much more horsepower.
We should all thank Opera for innovating so much and pushing the boundaries of the Internet.
Amazing Amazon!
to get the internet connection do you have a seperate service through amazon, pay monthly etc or how does it work??A friend has an ipad and says they have an “air card” what if your not in an area with connection how do you get connected, I know it is a silly question, just not all up to date with computers
Is it really a new web browser or is it an advanced CDN/content caching and optimizing system that delivers to a new web browser?
It sounds like the bulk of this product is the cloud, and I would be very interested to known what innovations have been made on the actual client browser?
I think the people pointing at Opera and Opera Turbo may be only focusing on speed and missing something important here. Opera is a great browser that’s very fast. It’s speed comes from optimized code, elegant programming and judicious use of compression. However, Opera resides on your hardware platform and that is very different from Silk.
Amazon split the browser into what is basically a user interface that resides on the user’s hardware (i.e., the Kindle Fire, right now) and everything else which resides in Amazon’s cloud. The “everything else” is doing all the work and that work can be carried out much quicker when it doesn’t involve communication at every step along the way with the user’s device. In addition, having the nuts and bolts of the browser resident in the cloud enables things like an engine that loads web pages based on predictions derived from aggregate usage as discussed in the video. This has the potential to be revolutionary; whether Amazon realizes that potential remains to be seen.
don’t like.
my whole traffic is running through amazon. all my surfing habits and everything could be recorded, datamined and whatever. it’s a central controlled infrastructure, totalitarian regimes look forward.
i want the web to be open and distributed, i don’t trade a few milliseconds against less freedom.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many references to Opera in one place!
Amazon really punching itself in the face by advertising this ridiculousness. It’s too complex for a normal user, and any advanced user knows that Opera has been doing this since the 90s, and the experience is sub-optimal.
from AMAZON SILK TERMS & CONDITIONS:
You can also choose to operate Amazon Silk in basic or “off-cloud” mode. Off-cloud mode allows web pages generally to go directly to your computer rather than pass through our servers. As such, it does not take advantage of Amazon’s cloud computing services to speed-up web content delivery.
My IPad2 renders web pages just fine. Thanks for solving this ‘problem’.
looks like opera turbo (as everyone mentioned)
we have also onlive browser. nothing new.
Can’t wait! I just got an iPad but I got it to do Kindle AND other things. This seems like an awesome device!
Guys, great work! Looking forward to try it on my own hands
oh, so its a proxy. that’s new. now amazon can monitor your browsing like google. their ad revenue is going to soar!
wow! This opens up a lot of open questions for data scientists. If the end point is not requesting data it means a lot of data lost that otherwise is available to websties to analyze user behaviour. Does anyone know Silk supports data analysis?
Finally a nice use of the cloud computing.
I want the silk browser on my other android devices too! I would buy it or even sign the service if it really works.
Yep. I’m on it. I love my kindle for it’s simplicity and this Silk sounds just great ( I love Opera too).
The best for you Amazon!
Pretty sure I don’t need my traffic being logged by Amazon. It sounds creepy to have every site I access wiped through Amazon.com.
I just read up on Opera Turbo. It compresses graphics, but nowhere have I read that they are doing the other things Amazon Silk is doing with evaluating users’ preferences and preparing pages to load prior to you asking for them and utilizing the cloud to decrease the number of TCP/IP handshakes.
I think the security is there & industry and government (not just social media) are moving towards cloud computing.
I wish I were a software developer! Drat! I would love to work for this company.
Its called HTML 5!
great news.
What is “off-cloud” mode (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=200775270)? More importantly, is HTTPS handled the same way?
Somehow the experience of browsing using a Terminal Session to my work’s machine (with many cores and better network); but at the next level, cool.
Silk could break censorship efforts too since the browser just talks to Amazon’s cloud.
Yeah, let them track what you are interested in. (Thats more creepy than apple tracking your location through their, more than one button would require too much intelligence, devices)
Sooo…..like SkyFire or Opera Mobile, then.
Granted, optimized, modernized, and leveraging AWS. Looks good.
But why no demo in this whole video? Show some side by side comparisons!
Would you be able to access Netflix or would it be blocked?
The idea is great and not so. Amazon clearly wants to make with this a faster browser which results in a better experience in their tablets. Great, but this idea cannot be applied for the general browser user.
First, I don’t think Amazon or any company in the world has the power to run the download and processing of the whole Internet, this is why a browser like this cannot be used outside their tablet or outside a way to generate profits as someone has to pay for the bandwidth.
Even if a company has the power to do it, that would be the end of the Internet, as it would be 1 single internet controlled by one company. Today, end users use their system and computing for processing and their ISP bandwidth for download.
This idea which is also implemented by Opera is that you use THEIR infrastructure almost completely. People always forget Opera, the browser that invented this idea, as well tabs and other great things in browsers. They are the truly innovators.
The idea of how Opera did it, for slow connections is great, but this idea cannot be scaled, all it requires is a single glitch in the Amazon service and offline we are all.
You are basically depending completely on their uptime and everybody, I say everybody has and will have downtime eventually. Unless the browser can switch to local processing.
Also, in a world where we are having faster ISP connections all the time and where computers are getting more powerful each day I don’t see how this could be a real benefit. Cloud is a benefit just for huge processing which cannot be done in a local computer, and yes I agree with another user, Cloud is just a fancy name to say “servers in their datacenter” nothing more.
Still Amazon is developing great services with great devices, the question is how long will they be able to absorb costs of users. This is not a negative post at all, in their tablets and in their ecosystem this will work, but not outside of it.
And thank you Amazon for bringing something better than the iPad, cheaper and better. Amazon is just a great company in every sense, they really have great minds behind them, and I think Bezos is the main one.
Anyone concerned about privacy issues fails to realize that everything you do on the web is tracked, it is tracked by your internet provider at the bare minimum, your web browser, facebook, and now the cloud. There is no way to browse privately. It is impossible.
There is no need for privacy if you aren’t doing anything wrong.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out on the current market. I wonder if it will deploy to some of the other handhelds on the market.
Well as all browsers go main issue here is cloud security for individual personal data, is currently unregulated so its a bad idea. For businesses makes sense, but for individuals its horrible and unregulated.
The moment someones personal data is on the cloud and that cloud holder thinks is ok to suddenly charge a fee, and that person is unable to pay, we now have hostage data problems. There is currently no laws for data hostaging yet. This most are not aware of happens all the time in the corporate worlds with bad economy and all and business going out of business every day. All those businesses with personal info on those cloud systems, the personal info stored is lost to the individual with zero security or zero chance of recovery.
They dont have to go into your home to see your doing illegal things, they can just 3rd party scan the AWS for what they need. Want your pictures back, Now there is a fee for it, as they will do data hostaging. It always happens later on. Sure now looks all fine and dandy until they fees start hitting, and you cant get you personal info back, as they have it permanently cached into their cloud servers.
Either pay us or we wont give you your cloud data back its ours to abuse since you agreed to use our product. Alot of people dont understand this concept. Soon its going to rear its ugly head. Many people alread have fallen to these problems.
We have no laws on this at all so, its fair game for a cloud to hold any data they choose, and at any cost, weather you agreed to it or not.
An unknown is if the cloud will work smoothly streaming video content, if yes they will have nailed it.
Brilliant idea, you guys are the cloud computing kings!
Can it center a div without some crazy, unintuitive workaround?
Here’s to progress!
Sounds very beast-like, I don’t know if I’m willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience just yet. Like on the smart phone, if you download something through their ap, it would no longer allow you access to your down loaded ap if you deleted the amazon ap store because it was constantly turning its self on to track my behavior. I’ll use a less intrusive copycat soon to be out.
I would love to know if I can play Myst, Riven and the further generations of Myst on the Kindle Fire or Amazon Silk.
Sounds interesting. Will be something to ponder when I finally buy a tablet.
There is a good first take on Silk security by Steve Gibson in Episode 320 of the Security Now podcast. You can find it on the Twit.tv site. The Silk discussion starts at about 5:44 into the podcast.
Some interesting points discussed are:
***There will be a secure connection between your browser and Amazon so you will be secure on public WiFi.
***The connection to sites hosted on Amazon’s EC2 should be very fast and secure.
***You can opt out of the Amazon “proxy” and operate in Basic mode.
Wow, with Silk the Kindle Fire could be the tablet with the best browsing experience out there. Cant wait to get it in my hands!
- Privacy concerns
- HTTPS
- Cache refresh rate?
- HTML5
- What happens to the browsing on Silk when AWS has issues?
Am excited to know more about this. Wow! Thanks to the genius people who made internet business more and more convenient day by day.
Silk is WebKit folks. plus bits and pieces from the Chromium group. This is neither new nor earth shattering, and sure won’t put a dent into the iPad market.
What about private web servers? Amazon’s cloud can’t see my router or modem status inside my home. Can Silk actually make HTTP requests on port 80? If not, then it’s not a browser — it’s an Amazon cloud client. That’s unfortunate, because then I can’t use it to access my own web servers that aren’t on the internet.
You are alway the best amazon great job
Sound great! How do I test this?
Congratulations on re-innovating things!!!Waiting to see how it looks/competes with other browsers..All the best.
Will it run Flash? If it will, consider it sold!
Privacy concerns me as every request will go through Amazon web services, so they get every piece of information…every request made, HTTPS connections might get compromised in ways that can be hard to imagine…it introduces new risks, plus web browser exploits might find new innovative ways to gain front foot steps..hackers will get amazon silk too…so be careful..when you use it
Is not this new technology the same concept as a proxy server with cache?
Everyone needs to relax,…. there is an opt-out function for the ec2 function in SILK.
sheesh!
Computing as a Service, here we come.
cannot wait to try Amazon silk
This looks promising! can’t wait to try it and see how it compare in real life test
From the design, it seems Silk can only talk to AC2 and not the regular web services out there. Since it is locked in to AC2, in theory Amazon has full control and if one day they decided to pull the plug, all these Silk browsers will be useless.
that doesnt make sense. a market gimmick for morons, the data still has to get on your device onto the browser. through wifi. the comparison between the desktop and phone was maybe accurate 2 years ago whens phones were slow. now that they have faster processors meant for not just web browsing (games, hd movies) this is just retarded.
also thats what 4G is for and faster internet. that upgrade is going to happen anyway because people use it or online gaming and video streaming. can amazon simplify that?
.. what about showing local HTML files? May be I don’t want them to be uploaded for parsing? May be I want to read them ‘off the grid’, in the wilderness, without 3G?
.. I think Google could only dream for such a tool for total user’s behaviour recording and analyzing. It could be Google’s next step (unless already patented).
… next time you will find that you can’t use your device without paid subscription.
… and when sophisticated processing will be offloaded to some huge server farms, how can you come with something independent, and compete with it?
Folks, this is a thin client app. Think terminal services. If you don’t like the results or are afraid of the government or Amazon seeing what you are doing then use a traditional browser. Nothing stopping you from getting a Galaxy Tab or iPad. They can still track you if they want to. The only serious question is security of your data and browsing habits. If you don’t want anyone to see where you are going don’t go anywhere. In this day and age they can see where you are going if you step out your door. No difference with your browsing habits. As far as security of your data, there are plenty of encryption programs that will protect your data. You don’t want anyone reading your messages, invest in an encryption program like PGP. Think of it this way, you live in an apartment where the manager has a master key, invest in a deadbolt.
Another one? I really hope this lives up to its promise.
Nice job guys. Offloading processing to the cloud… genius.
“..our backend has some of the fattest pipes to the internet that you’ll find, and we do all the heavy lifting on the back end..”
SOLD. I just preordered.
For me, the entire video could be distilled into that sentence. It sounds like a great idea, and I’m going to check it out.
martyg
Lots of potential but what happens to the owner of the website that depends on metrics such as page views. How should pre-caching requests be counted in terms of metrics or even click through rates for add revenues?
Will we be relying on EC2 to keep track of the number of real page views?
Will web site be able to opt out of the silk optimizations?
the whole idea seems really interesting BUT I would really like to know more about privacy issues and how AWS is going to safeguard my informations…
Interesting, let’s see how it delivers.
Isn’t this what the Sidekick did like 10 years ago, but it always crashed because it was so dependent on the servers. Will they have a twitter whale page when they crash? I love the idea of a solid competitor to the heavyweight Ipad, being so smug at being first and only. Amazon has the content and the support, but do they have the innovation to keep it interesting as such this is an emerging market even though it seems to have huge momentum. Can they move forward where others have failed (many). I hope so- almost everything I buy, I look on Amazon first. Thank me. I will buy into this Fire, but my Iphone has been a great in bed surfer since day one. The Ipad, not so tote-able.
I wonder how quick it is with Netflix.
interesting
WaaS (Web as a Service) is likely to be the new buzzword now.
I love this cloud computing technology! Silk browser seems to be very promising. Looking forward to try out soon. Is there a security concern like someone pointed out in the comments?
I can’t wait to get my hands on this to try it out. Great Expectations.
A game changer in browser market. Please, bring this to desktop soon. Great Amazon!
And what if Amazon EC2 fails?
Yes, any chance we’d get a desktop version? Any how does this differ from Opera Mobile’s tech? Besides the obvious that silk uses EC2.
Please, make this browser available on Kindle 3 instead of the old Safari-based browser. Thanks
Will it be able to fully render all types of web code and even Google fonts?
Fantastic!
Amazing amazon. Another new tech arise!
A fantastic eco-system & a sustainable business proposition that, in theory, is within the affordability interests of people in the market for mobile phones. Of course Silk is crying out to be open-source, lock stock & barrow, because there are a hugh number of markets and services which Amazon simply cannot develop because they well outside Amazon core focus of peddling static American pulp.
AMAZING! This is a dream for every company! You can spy on your users and sell it as a new feature. This is exactly what I will never buy! Opt out? John Doe will never know…
This appears on the face of it to be a great idea. A company that has actually used data on how a person interacts with the web (and common sense) to devise something that is faster, more accessible and utilises the power of the cloud to suppprt it (how good will the Amazon cloud be?). However, I wonder how they have actually designed the interaction achitecture around the browser…..if its not user friendly, then it does not matter how fast it works. Would love to try it out and see for myself.
great concept and and an elegant device !