The “split browser” notion is that Amazon will use its EC2 back end to pre-cache user web browsing, using its fat back-end pipes to grab all the web content at once so the lightweight Fire-based browser has to only download one simple stream from Amazon’s servers. But what this means is that Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users. Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet. People who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here. Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping in and what prices they’re being offered there. What’s more, Amazon is getting this not by expensive, proactive scraping the Web, like Google has to do; they’re getting it passively by offering a simple caching service, and letting Fire users do the hard work of crawling the Web. In essence the Fire user base is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, scraping the Web for free and providing Amazon with the most valuable cache of user behavior in existence.

But does it seem likely that Amazon will put that much emphasis on Silk just for the Fire? I don't think that's likely. Amazon has several jobs posted for Silk engineers, and while mobile is mentioned, it's not exclusive. I strongly suspect that Amazon is going to be releasing a Silk desktop browser eventually. Probably not in the near future – Amazon needs to make sure that its infrastructure can handle the onslaught of all the Kindle users before trying to scale to an unknown number of desktop users.

Each Kindle is tied to an Amazon ID, which gives Amazon a great deal of information about you already. Introducing Silk into the mix and Amazon is going to be in a position to know a great deal about your Web browsing habits along with your buying habits and media habits. Now Amazon is in a position to know what books you buy, what shows you watch, the Web sites you visit and much more.

The software is unfriendly to Mac users running Firefox: It changes the browser's homepage to comcast.net, and blocks users from changing it to anything else.

I heard this from a friend who'd just signed up for Comcast's Xfinity high-speed Internet service and soon discovered some behavior on his Mac that is akin to Windows malware - something had hijacked his Internet settings. The technician who arrived to turn on the service said that a software package from Comcast was necessary to complete the installation. My friend later discovered that his homepage had been changed to comcast.net, and that Comcast software had modified his Firefox profile so that there was no way to change the homepage setting. 

I contacted Comcast; they initially blamed the problem on a bug in Firefox. Mozilla denies this, and says it's Comcast's doing.

"This is NOT a Firefox bug or issue," a Mozilla spokesperson wrote in an email. "It is a Comcast method that applies preference changes to Firefox."

Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas acknowledged that the Xfinity software hijacks Firefox's settings. He said the problem is limited to Mac users, and that permanency of the change was unintentional. He added that the company is in the process of correcting the installation software.

"Customers absolutely should be able to change their preferred homepage anytime," Douglas said. "We're obviously apologizing for any inconvenience we've caused Mac users."

• Google already has an operating system in Android. While that was initially focused on mobile devices, it's already being expanded to netbooks, so turning that into a more complete operating system seems like the way to go.
• Chrome itself still needs a ton of work. I've tried using it, and it's crazy buggy and so unstable -- I simply gave up and went back to Firefox. Jumping from just browser functionality to a full on OS before the browser code is really stable seems like a big leap.
• The idea of turning a browser into an operating system has been around since the days of Netscape (folks there used to talk about how it was making Windows obsolete), but reality has proven otherwise. In fact, it was partly Netscape's desire to take down Windows by making Netscape more OS-like that caused Netscape to get so bloated as to be nearly useless.
• Why now? Why an OS? Part of the appeal of the growth of the web itself (and Google with it) is the fact that it's made the whole operating system less and less integral to the computing experience. With the move towards more of a "cloud" based world (which Google has been a big part of driving) there just isn't as much value in the operating system as much as in the past. So why jump on that bandwagon now?
• Given all of the above, it just seems like a confused strategy. There will likely be conflicts between Android and Chrome and consumer confusion as well, not to mention worries from folks who just want Chrome to be a simple, competent browser.