Amazon Silk
Amazon Silk is a web browser developed by Amazon for Kindle Fire.[1] It uses a split architecture whereby some of the processing is performed on Amazon's servers to improve webpage loading performance. The frontend is based on the WebKit browser engine.
Architecture
For each webpage, Silk decides which browser subsystems (e.g. networking, HTML, page rendering) to run locally on the tablet and which to run remotely on the Amazon EC2 servers.[2]
Silk uses Google's SPDY protocol to speed up the loading of web pages.[3] Silk gives SPDY performance improvements for non-SPDY optimized websites if the pages are sent through Amazon's servers. In real-world testing, several sites have recommended disabling cloud-based acceleration to improve page loading speed.[4] [5]
Security
Privacy and security concerns have been raised in regards to Amazon intermediating all Internet activity through the Silk browser. However the Silk browser includes the option to turn off Amazon server-side processing.[6][7][8]
Name
Amazon says "a thread of silk is invisible yet incredibly strong connection between two different things", and thus calls the browser Amazon Silk as it is the connection between Kindle Fire and Amazon's EC2 servers.[9]
See also
References
- ^ "Amazon's Silk Browser May Not Be Smooth When It Comes to Privacy". PCWorld. Sep 28, 2011. http://www.pcworld.com/article/240805/amazons_silk_browser_may_not_be_smooth_when_it_comes_to_privacy.html. Retrieved September 29, 2011.
- ^ Introducing Amazon Silk
- ^ Amazon Silk is hiring: Software Development Engineers - SPDY
- ^ http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amazon-kindle-fire-review,3076-7.html
- ^ http://www.anandtech.com/show/5139/amazons-silk-browser-tested-less-bandwidth-consumed-but-slower-performance
- ^ Gregg Keizer (29 September 2011), "Amazon's Silk browser raises privacy, security eyebrows", www.computerworld.com (Computerworld): pp. 1–2, http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220403/Amazon_s_Silk_browser_raises_privacy_security_eyebrows
- ^ Thomas Claburn (29 September 2011), "Amazon Silk Browser Prompts Privacy Worries", www.informationweek.com (InformationWeek), http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/231602422
- ^ Stephen Shankland (29 September 2011), "Amazon Silk: One step forward, two steps back", news.cnet.com (CNET), http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20113387-264/amazon-silk-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/
- ^ Amazon Silk—Amazon's Revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated Web Browser on YouTube
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- Annual revenue US$24.5 billion (2009)
- Employees 31,200 (2010)
- Stock symbol NASDAQ: AMZN
- Website Amazon.com
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Italics indicate software no longer in development.
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