Amazon made a little bit of a splash yesterday when they launched the new Kindle Fire HD line and one of the things that they didn’t make such a big fuss about is the ads that will be on the device’s lockscreens. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Kindle use ads as a manner to either make the devices cheaper or to make a little extra cash – it’s more than likely half a dozen of one and six the other knowing Amazon. Either way, I doubt many users would appreciate not having the option to choose ads or no ads at the device’s purchase like they did with the Kindle reader from last year.
However, a tipster has informed Engadget of a response from an e-mail asking for clarification on the whole ads mess and the response they got is below:
“Special Offers appear directly on your Kindle Fire. Offers appear on your lock screen, and you can also view offers from the Home screen by tapping Offers. By delivering these offers to your Kindle Fire, Amazon is able to sell it for a lower price.
“I understand that you would like to opt out of the special offer and willing to pay extra for opting out special offer. Options for unsubscribing special offer will be announced soon.
“To ensure the utmost attention, I’ve also passed your message on to the appropriate people in our company. We value customer feedback such as yours as it helps us continue to improve the service and selection we provide.“
So, whilst it’s not clear how you’ll be able to turn these ads off it’s good to know that you will, at least, be able to turn them off. Which, let’s face it should be a given considering you’ve bought the device directly from Amazon and I’d say that the device is therefore yours. However, it wouldn’t surprise me if Amazon did want some more money out of those who don’t want ads intruding their device usage and I’d be very disappointed if they did do that. We’ll have to wait and see just what Amazon are indeed planning for these ads.
[Source: Engadget]