Amazon is discontinuing the Kindle Cloud Reader

Monday, July 13th, 2020

If it’s true that Amazon is discontinuing the Kindle Cloud Reader, I will be sorely disappointed:

Over the course of the past week, Amazon has been pulling features away from it and it looks like it is on the verge of being discontinued.

We conducted a review a couple of weeks ago on the Kindle Cloud Reader, and since then, the navigation tabs to download ebooks from the Cloud have been removed. The only books you can read, are ones that have been previously downloaded, no new titles can be accessed. Ebooks from certain publishers with DRM cannot be opened anymore, even if you had previously downloaded them. There is a popup window that appears, notifying readers to download the Kindle app for iOS or Android. Amazon also pulled the ability to read books offline, you need a dedicated internet connection to read.

Comments

  1. Bob Sykes says:

    Amazon does not sell ebooks. You rent them, and Amazon can discontinue your access to anything you are renting at any time, viz. “1984.” If you want to own a book, you have to buy a printed copy that you can put on your book shelf.

    All ebook publishers have the ability to remove their books from your reader. Amazon is merely the most aggressive.

  2. Freddo says:

    To quote: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” I prefer to download from alternative sources over giving money to any tech giant or publisher that engages in deplatforming or censorship.

  3. Harry Jones says:

    I once seriously considered writing and publishing ebooks. Other things consumed my time, but I haven’t forgotten the idea.

    As a reader, I’m perfectly willing to pay money for ebooks if they offer me a square deal, no funny stuff.

    I have always been irked by the abuses dominant platforms inflict on all stakeholders. But where to go? What’s up and coming to replace Kindle?

    Nook, maybe?

  4. Dan Kurt says:

    Kindle still works the same for me on:
    1) iPhone 11 Pro
    2) iPad Pro
    3) iMac 27″

    I can down load ebooks and read them off line on all three devices.

  5. Buckethead says:

    The cloud reader is something I found useful from time to time. I just read Retrotopia on it last week, using Safari. But mostly, I use the Kindle app on my iPhone.

    Bob is right, which is why I download all Kindle purchases, and move them elsewhere. It’s been awhile since I bothered, but I used to convert them to epubs and read them in the Marvin reader app.

    If you go to the page for any book you’ve purchased, you should see a banner at the top that says “you purchased this item.” Click the “Manage your content and devices” link and you’ll see a list of all your book purchases. For each title there’s an actions button you can click, then select the “download & transfer via USB” option. You can save the book wherever you want, or use an app like Calibre to convert it to other formats. Annoyingly, it looks like you’d have to do it one by one. There’s probably tools to get all of them.

  6. RLVC says:

    Nerds think that the Net is a computer cluster.

    In fact, the Net is where the people are.

    And where are the people?

    https://postimg.cc/G99XjGHv

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