From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Web browser for Amazon Fire
Amazon Silk
is a
web browser
developed by
Amazon
. It was launched in November 2011 for
Amazon Fire
and
Fire Phone
,
[1]
and a
Fire TV
version was launched in November 2017.
[2]
The addition of Silk to the
Echo Show
was announced at an Amazon event in September 2018.
[3]
The browser uses a split architecture where some of the processing is performed on Amazon's servers to improve webpage loading performance. It is based on the
open source
Chromium
project that uses the
Blink
and
V8
engines.
Architecture
[
edit
]
For each webpage, Silk decides which browser subsystems (networking, HTML or page rendering) to run locally on the device and which to run remotely on its own
Amazon EC2
servers.
Silk uses Google's
SPDY
protocol to speed up loading of
web pages
.
[4]
Silk gives SPDY performance improvements for non-SPDY optimized websites if the pages are sent through Amazon's servers.
[
citation needed
]
Some early reviewers found that cloud-based acceleration did not necessarily improve page loading speed, most notably on faster connections or for simpler web pages.
[5]
[6]
Some privacy organizations raised concerns with how Amazon passes Silk traffic via its servers, effectively operating as an
Internet service provider
for those using the browser. The Silk browser includes the option to turn off Amazon server-side processing.
[7]
[8]
[9]
On July 26, 2016 it was reported that Silk prevents access to
Google
over
HTTPS
, but that bug has since been fixed.
[10]
Silk runs with the Amazon user account of the Amazon device running Silk. To access resources from another web account, external utility apps are available, e.g. to use Chrome bookmarks from a desktop or mobile web account.
[11]
Name
[
edit
]
Amazon says "a thread of silk is an 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.
[12]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Amazon's Silk Browser May Not Be Smooth When It Comes to Privacy"
.
PCWorld
. September 28, 2011
. Retrieved
September 29,
2011
.
- ^
Saba, Elias (November 28, 2017).
"Amazon releases their Silk Web Browser for the Amazon Fire TV"
.
AFTVnews
. Retrieved
July 10,
2023
.
- ^
Herrick, Justin (September 20, 2018).
"Amazon Redesigns the Echo Show, and It's Very Sleek"
.
TechnoBuffalo
. Retrieved
September 21,
2018
.
- ^
"Amazon Silk is hiring: Software Development Engineers ? SPDY"
. Aws.amazon.com
. Retrieved
June 24,
2012
.
- ^
"Amazon Silk: Assisted Web Browsing (Sort Of) : The Amazon Kindle Fire: Benchmarked, Tested, And Reviewed"
. Tomshardware.com. November 24, 2011
. Retrieved
June 24,
2012
.
- ^
"Amazon's Silk Browser Acceleration Tested: Less Bandwidth Consumed, But Slower Performance"
. AnandTech
. Retrieved
June 24,
2012
.
- ^
Keizer, Gregg (September 29, 2011).
"Amazon's Silk browser raises privacy, security eyebrows"
.
Computerworld
. Retrieved
July 10,
2023
.
- ^
Claburn, Thomas (September 29, 2011).
"Amazon Silk Browser Prompts Privacy Worries"
.
InformationWeek
. Archived from
the original
on October 1, 2011
. Retrieved
July 10,
2023
.
- ^
"Amazon Silk: One step forward, two steps back"
.
CNET
. Retrieved
July 10,
2023
.
- ^
"Advisory: Amazon's Silk Browser on the Kindle Didn't Use SSL for Google Search"
.
Nightwatch Cybersecurity
. July 21, 2016
. Retrieved
July 21,
2016
.
- ^
"Amazon Silk Bookmarks"
.
chrome.google.com
. Retrieved
May 25,
2023
.
- ^
Amazon Silk?Amazon's Revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated Web Browser
on
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