Almost everyone in the world knows about Amazon, as the eCommerce giant offers nearly anything you can think of with insanely fast shipping times.
Along with products from third-party companies, Amazon also makes and sells its own products, such as Fire TVs.
However, if you have an Amazon device, you may have noticed an app called “Amazon Silk” and wondered what it was. If you’d like to find out, keep reading below to learn all you need to know about this app!
What Is Amazon Silk In [currentyear]?
Amazon Silk is a web browser for people using a Fire Tablet, Fire TV, or Echo Show as of [currentyear]. Silk operates like other web browsers, but offers faster browsing speeds, saves storage space, and has predictive technology. When you use Silk, your internet history runs through Amazon’s cloud, which is convenient but raises security concerns.
If you want to learn more about Amazon Silk, such as the benefits of using the browser and the potential downsides the web browser carries, keep on reading for more interesting facts!
What Is Amazon Silk?
Amazon Silk is a web browser specially designed for customers using a Fire Tablet, Fire TV, or Echo Show device.
With Amazon Silk, the web browser works similarly to Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, and other web browsers.
For example, Amazon Silk allows you to add bookmarks, search the internet, watch live videos, browse your favorite sites, and much more.
Essentially, Amazon Silk is Amazon’s version of a web browser that only works on specific Amazon devices.
Why Did Amazon Create Amazon Silk?
Amazon created Amazon Silk to allow users to have access to a faster and more secure web browser while using Amazon devices.
Further, Silk is built on the Chromium Project, which offers a much more responsive Internet experience.
Also, Silk is the preferred web browser for Amazon devices like the Echo Show and Fire TV.
How Do You Use Amazon Silk on a Fire Tablet?
Fortunately, if you have an Amazon Fire Tablet, using Silk is very easy. With that, all Fire Tablets and app-based Kindle devices come preinstalled with Amazon Silk.
Therefore, there’s no need to download anything new. Instead, simply search for your apps on Amazon Silk, and you can start browsing the web.
Moreover, you can use Amazon Silk on Fire Tablets or app-based Kindles to do the following:
- Browse the web for new reading material
- Online shop
- Follow news and other trending events
Additionally, if you want to learn more details about using Silk on your Amazon Fire Tablet, don’t hesitate to contact Amazon customer support or visit the Fire Tablet help page on Amazon’s website.
How Do You Use Silk on an Amazon Fire TV?
Learning how to use Silk on your Amazon Fire TV is also very easy and only takes a few moments to learn.
For example, you can simply use your Fire TV remote to say “Alexa, open Amazon Silk,” and the web browser will immediately open.
Next, you can use Silk to watch videos, visit your favorite websites, watch live events, and online shop.
Moreover, you can use Amazon Silk to do the following on your Fire TV:
- Bookmark your favorite websites
- Find trending videos
- Have access to the internet from your TV
- Browse websites in a private browsing mode
Overall, Silk makes browsing the internet from your Fire TV more secure than other web browsers and makes it easy with the voice command feature.
How Do You Use Silk on an Amazon Echo Show?
Finally, the last place you can use Amazon Silk is on the Echo Show. Like the other Amazon devices, navigating Silk on the Echo Show is very straightforward.
For example, you can simply say “Alexa, open Silk,” and your Echo Show will do the rest of the work for you!
From that point, you can browse the web for new recipes, bookmark all your favorite sites, and play music.
What Are the Benefits of Using Amazon Silk?
As you can imagine, there are several benefits to using Amazon Silk compared to other web browsers.
However, keep in mind that the following list contains only a portion of the advantages of using Amazon Silk.
1. Amazon Silk Is Faster
Compared to other web browsers, using Amazon Silk offers faster performance.
With that, a lot of the work rendering web pages is performed in the cloud, allowing Silk to work faster than your regular browser.
Also, Amazon’s cloud will enable you to free up computing resources and bandwidth, which would otherwise slow down your searching speed.
2. Amazon Silk Saves Storage Space
As previously mentioned, Amazon Silk uses a cloud to navigate most of Silk’s operations.
Therefore, the size of the browser cache on your Fire TV or Tablet is significantly reduced.
Moreover, Amazon’s cloud saves you storage space, which is nice considering some devices have storage constraints.
3. Amazon Silk Learns Your Preferences
Another benefit of using Amazon Silk is that the cloud-based technology can actually learn which websites are your favorites.
Then, Silk uses predictive technologies to try and guess what other web pages you might ask for in the future before you even enter anything in the browser.
Additionally, the predictive tendencies can speed up your internet performance.
4. Websites Perform Better on Amazon Silk
A fourth advantage of using Amazon Silk is that websites perform better on Silk than other browsers.
In other words, Silk automatically tailors content to your Fire Tablet or TV before it reaches the device.
That way, more oversized images on a website are compressed to your device’s screen, which also helps with overall Internet performance.
Moreover, this technology prevents web pages from using too much bandwidth and operates more efficiently on Amazon Silk.
What Are the Cons of Using Amazon Silk?
As with all things, there are some negative aspects of using Amazon Silk.
Of course, it’s essential to be aware of these things before using Silk so you know exactly what kind of internet browser you’re using.
1. Amazon Operates as a Middleman
Although Amazon’s cloud-based technology offers an array of positives, like predicting websites you might like, it also comes with negatives.
Amazon essentially acts as a middleman between a user and the internet.
As you can imagine, this creates some questions and concerns about user privacy because Amazon tracks your every move while you’re on the web.
Still, Amazon says it keeps your information anonymous, but some people aren’t convinced it’s kept entirely private.
For example, some people speculate Amazon may sell certain user information to other companies and even the government.
So, keep this in mind before using Amazon Silk.
2. Amazon Silk Raises Security Concerns
Remember, Amazon Silk uses the Amazon cloud to process all of the information you research.
Therefore, when you log in to your bank account using Silk, the data is given to Amazon, and you’re never interacting with secure websites.
Again, Amazon says it doesn’t sell or share your information with anyone, but some people aren’t willing to take that risk.
3. Amazon Silk Is Growing Fast
Amazon is continuously expanding, meaning more and more people are buying Amazon devices, such as the Fire TV.
So, if other companies decide to take a Silk cloud-based approach to browsing, it could pose several problems in the future.
In other words, if Google, Apple, and Microsoft developed cloud-based systems that gathered all of your information, the web would become a lot less secure.
To learn more about Amazon, you can also see our posts on what is Amazon Live, what is an Amazon Fire stick, and what is Amazon Drive.
Conclusion
Amazon Silk is a cloud-based web browser specially designed for Amazon devices like the Fire TV or Echo Show. With Amazon Silk, users can browse the web, bookmark their favorite sites, and experience a more efficient browsing experience.
However, there are some concerns about Amazon Silk, such as security and that Amazon has to access to a user’s information.
