Amazon Silk

Short description: Web browser for Amazon Fire

Amazon Silk

Amazon Silk's secondary app icon

Amazon Silk browser running on an Amazon Fire

Developer(s)| Amazon.com
Initial release| November 15, 2011; 14 years ago (2011-11-15)
Engine| Blink, V8
Operating system| Fire OS
Available in| English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Chinese
Type| Mobile browser
License| Freeware, proprietary
Website| docs.aws.amazon.com/silk

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] Amazon Silk was announced for the Echo Show in September 2018, and subsequently added the same month.[3]

The browser utilizes a split architecture where some of the processing is performed on Amazon's servers to improve a website's loading performance. Based on Google's open-source Chromium project, Silk uses the Blink and V8 engines for displaying webpages and executing JavaScript.

## Contents

* 1 Architecture
* 2 Name
* 3 See also
* 4 References

## Architecture

For each page request, Silk dynamically decides whether networking, HTML parsing, and rendering tasks are handled locally or offloaded to Amazon EC2 servers.

Silk utilizes Google's SPDY protocol to enhance browsing speed.[4] Silk provides SPDY performance benefits to websites that don’t natively support SPDY when pages are routed through Amazon’s servers.[5] 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.[6][7]

Privacy organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, raised concerns with Amazon passing Silk traffic through its own servers, effectively operating as an Internet service provider for users of the browser. Silk includes an option to disable Amazon's server-side processing.[8][9][10] On July 26, 2016, it was reported that Silk prevented access to Google over HTTPS, though this issue has been resolved.[11]

Silk operates under the user Amazon account associated with the device. 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.[12]

## Name

Amazon in the past has stated "a thread of silk is an invisible yet incredibly strong connection between two different things", and thus calls the browser Amazon Silk as it represents the connection between Kindle Fire and Amazon's EC2 servers.[13]

## See also

* History of web browsers
* List of web browsers
* Google Chrome
* Opera Mini
* Opera Turbo
* MarioNet split web browser
* Brave

## References

1. ↑ "Amazon's Silk Browser May Not Be Smooth When It Comes to Privacy". PCWorld. September 28, 2011. http://www.pcworld.com/article/240805/amazons_silk_browser_may_not_be_smooth_when_it_comes_to_privacy.html.
2. ↑ Saba, Elias (2017-11-28). "Amazon releases their Silk Web Browser for the Amazon Fire TV" (in en-US). https://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-releases-their-silk-web-browser-for-the-amazon-fire-tv/.
3. ↑ Herrick, Justin (20 September 2018). "Amazon Redesigns the Echo Show, and It's Very Sleek". TechnoBuffalo. https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/09/20/new-echo-show-design-features-price-release-date/.
4. ↑ "Amazon Silk is hiring: Software Development Engineers – SPDY". Aws.amazon.com. http://aws.amazon.com/amazonsilk-jobs/.
5. ↑ Paul, Ryan (2011-09-28). "Amazon's Silk Web browser adds new twist to old idea" (in en). https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/09/amazons-silk-web-browser-adds-new-twist-to-old-idea/.
6. ↑ "Amazon Silk: Assisted Web Browsing (Sort Of) : The Amazon Kindle Fire: Benchmarked, Tested, And Reviewed". Tomshardware.com. November 24, 2011. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amazon-kindle-fire-review,3076-7.html.
7. ↑ "Amazon's Silk Browser Acceleration Tested: Less Bandwidth Consumed, But Slower Performance". AnandTech. http://www.anandtech.com/show/5139/amazons-silk-browser-tested-less-bandwidth-consumed-but-slower-performance.
8. ↑ Keizer, Gregg (2011-09-29). "Amazon's Silk browser raises privacy, security eyebrows" (in en). https://www.computerworld.com/article/2511561/amazon-s-silk-browser-raises-privacy--security-eyebrows.html.
9. ↑ Claburn, Thomas (September 29, 2011). "Amazon Silk Browser Prompts Privacy Worries". http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/privacy/231602422.
10. ↑ "Amazon Silk: One step forward, two steps back" (in en). https://www.cnet.com/culture/amazon-silk-one-step-forward-two-steps-back/.
11. ↑ "Advisory: Amazon's Silk Browser on the Kindle Didn't Use SSL for Google Search". July 21, 2016. https://wwws.nightwatchcybersecurity.com/2016/07/21/advisory-amazons-silk-browser-on-the-kindle-didnt-use-ssl-for-google-search/.
12. ↑ "Amazon Silk Bookmarks" (in en). https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-silk-bookmarks/hgdccplaplflamamehnmlcipaekgkjnp.
13. ↑ Amazon Silk—Amazon's Revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated Web Browser on YouTube

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