This intermediate step might be just a bother for tech-savy users, but is a show-stopper for the average Kindle user that prevents them from using free content.
The average Kindle user can't even figure out how to get a book off of PG onto their computer, and from there to their Kindle via USB cable. Most Kindle users are shocked and amazed to find out they can get even free books on their Kindle, and that they are not required to buy everything direct from Amazon.
Android browsers have always allowed applications to grab downloaded files and store them in their respective folders. The only thing Amazon has to do is to provide an url handler for mobi files. If you sideload FBReader to the Kindle then FBReader happily grabs epubs and stores them in its own folder. Why can't the Kindle app do that? Answer: because Amazon has deliberatly crippled it.
Never been clear to me what is maliciousness verses incompetence on Amazon's part. For example did they really intend to permit free book downloads on the original Kindles, or was that an accident? Or did some developer "go rogue" and put this "feature" in without telling management about it. And again, by comparison many of the common web browsers, including the "free" browsers, on desktop computers used to be much more "user friendly" in terms of downloading and auto-launching free books on a desktop than they are now. So its not just Amazon who is crapifying the whole process.
The Nexus 7 is the same device for the same price and yet doesn't put any restrictions on you.
Bull-pucky. Google has put b*-loads of restrictions on Google Books making it more and more a requirement that one own a Google device in order to use Google Books. And Google is sponsoring digitization of old books on campuses in exchange for restrictions that prevent those colleges from being allowed them to distribute those digitizations. Even though those digitizations are of "risen to the public domain" books - i.e. they SHOULD be freely redistributable. This is Google putting the Google copyfraud back onto public domain books.
Then why are you being their good buddy? Why do you defend their restrictive policies. Why don't you stand up for free books?
I don't defend Amazon's restrictive policies, and I don't defend Google's restrictive policies, and I don't defend Apple's restrictive policies. What I do do, as contrasting to what you do, is I try my best to tell people what IS and what ISN'T true and then I encourage people to make their own best choices AND to NOT inhale the fumes nor drink the kool-aid but rather go in with their eyes open and realize the limitations inherit in any particular device and any particular vendor. I read free books, I create free books, I distribute free books, but I also buy books, and even food, from some of these vendors IF AND WHEN I think that they offer good quality good value for a good price. I do not buy from Walmart -- even a "book omnivore" has his limits. I do not buy from Apple, simply because I personally do not like their products. I did buy one daughter an iPhone, and she loves it. She also loves her Kindle, and her PC laptop. I bought my wife an iPhone 5 because she insisted on it, and guess what she hates it. She also tried a Kindle after resisting for many years and now she loves it. Why? Because it works: you can actually read books on it and have fun doing so. In my particular case, I created a little not-for-profit website some years ago to help out my local community and Google "Do No Evil" insisted to everyone that that site didn't even exist -- even if one directly typed the site web address into the Google search engine Google said "sorry site does not exist" -- until I paid Google real advertising fees, and then and only then was Google willing to admit that my site even existed. So when it comes to Google I certainly warn people: "Beware, and do not believe the 'Do No Evil' advertising slogan, because that's all it is -- an advertising slogan." Looking at recent market caps: Market Cap Size: 567 Billion $ Apple 237 Billion $ Microsoft 220 Billion $ Google 108 Billion $ Amazon None of them gets that profitable without engaging in monopolistic practices -- without which pretty much everyone admits software has no market value. Which also doesn't imply that PG is being altogether altruistic with their crappy little legalize bunging everything up.