Amazon is really serious. The company has recently reacted and noticeably restricted its own shopping app. Now the streaming app followed with Prime Video, where the restrictions are even more massive. The goal is for Google to stop making money.
Amazon restricts Prime Video
Amazon recently restricted its own shopping app. You can no longer buy digital goods there. This means that you cannot purchase Android apps or e-books directly via the app there. If you want the content, you have to go through the website. This is exactly what now also applies to the Prime Video app. You can no longer buy anything there (source: Caschy).
This has to do with the fact that Amazon focuses on digital goods Google has to pay a share, if the app was installed via the Google Play Store. It is quite normal in the industry for in-app purchases that the platform gets a 30 percent share. Of course, Amazon wants to avoid that and prefers to restrict its own apps instead of paying a share to Google.
This is of course very bad for customers, because you can’t just rent or buy a film via the app that you can watch later on the TV. You always have to now make a detour via the website. Especially on Fridays, when there were 99-cent films to rent, I often secured them quickly via the app so that I could watch them on TV at the weekend. This is now much more complicated.
Why Amazon Prime is worth it:
What else can you do with the Prime Video app?
The purchase option has been removed, but you can of course continue to use the “Prime Video” app to stream films and series. Anything you can access through your Prime membership is still available. If you buy a film or a series via the Amazon website outside of the app with your account, you can of course still watch the content via the app.