Comments on: Why Engadget isn’t on Kindle

By: Ryan Block

Ryan Block — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:56:53 +0000

Eh, not really. We don’t really make any money from our full RSS feeds anyway, so it’s no real difference. Believe it or not, there’s nothing behind the curtain, no ulterior motives at play.

By: Limbo

Limbo — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 04:33:48 +0000

I have to agree with #10. Who cares if I choose to pay for something that you are getting a revenue share on? I know that going into it and am willing to pay the fee.

I have a feeling this is more about you getting your ads cut out of the feeds so if the Kindle really took off, and your rev share from it didn’t equal the ad rev you get, then that is the real problem.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 15:10:35 +0000

I’m pretty disappointed. My Kindle arrived yesterday and I looked everywhere for an Engadget feed to test out the blog reader. Ryan, I understand that you guys don’t want to charge for your content — but some of us WANT TO PAY for your content. You are letting principle get in the way of revenue and at the same time you are depriving your most rabid fans of their preferred form of entertainment. I’ll try to check it out on the free web browser but in all honesty that app sucks, and I would much rather just have your entries show up automagically.

By: John

John — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 06:10:30 +0000

I think if you check you’ll see the Web portion is in the experimental area. When the bugs are worked out I suspect we will see it be a subscription as well.

By: pixie

pixie — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 01:12:45 +0000

its push vs pull, they push it to you and its ON your kindle so you can read it on an airplane even if no wireless, if you use the browser you can only read it if you have a signal and its not stored ont he device or formated for the device. I am not agreeing with charging for it, but they are doing something extra atleast.

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 00:40:42 +0000

Amazon TOS vaguely lays out that if you abuse usage, they’re lay a fee or cut it off directly.

I understand they have to make a profit on the ‘free’ lunch and hope a nominal fee can be applied to the MVNO service: buy the engadget blog and get 10MB of bw per month, something like that.

Also I think the browser is running NetFront 3.3 per last page of the manual. Access (fmr PalmSource) maintains NF and v3.3 supposedly supports PDF.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:38:24 +0000

So, they have blocked bloglines and google reader?

By: Vance

Vance — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 21:57:06 +0000

Ryan, that is interesting about the free browser, which has access to all the blogs they want to otherwise charge for. My question would be whether the aggregator shows the full web page, or just the text. That would be a double-whammy for Engadget: charging readers for the content AND not showing them any of the ads that support that content!

On a related point, does the browser Kindle uses have an ad-blocker? :0) BTW, I wanted to give you kudos for how you handled the Apple ad issue on the site. I still have issues with the sheer number of ads on the site (they made the page so painful I actually stopped reading until I heard about ad-blocker), you stepped up and dealt with it professionally (even if all the commenters didn’t return that professionalism). You can read my own comments there on the issue.

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 20:35:10 +0000

I appreciate you looking out for us readers Ryan. And yeah, I want to read Engadget for free.

…but for those who just GOTTA get Engadget on their new Apple IIc…er…I mean Kindle, there must be some kind of work around possible using Yahoo Pipes.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

By: Ryan Block

Ryan Block — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:31:39 +0000

pennyfan87, there is no revenue sharing agreement with the internet, we post content, people are free to access it however and wherever they want via the web.

This is a device-specific content channel and with it comes revenue sharing agreements. We are not out to make money on our content, our business is to make money from advertising — the two are distinctly different.

By: James Papadopoulos

James Papadopoulos — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:27:48 +0000

“…But until then you’ll just have to use the Kindle’s paradoxically free web browser to hit up Engadget. (Yeah, I know, I don’t get why they charge for blogs but make browsing free, either. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?)”

Yeah - wouldn’t the browsing cost more money anyhooo? Whoops… getting a call on my iPhone… what a bargain!

By: pennyfan87

pennyfan87 — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:22:52 +0000

I don’t think I quite understand.

Instead of charging a flat rate for unlimited bandwidth, they charge per subscription.

You don’t have a problem with me paying my ISP for bandwidth that I use to read Engadget. So why should this be different?