
The Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick have had the ability to shop Amazon.com products for some time, but the feature has been sitting dormant. A trusted source within Amazon, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells me a full-fledged shopping feature was nearly complete and ready to be tested in the wild, but Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pulled the feature after receiving a demo. His biggest complaint was the limited shopping cart functionality. The Fire TV shopping feature demoed to Bezos allowed customers to either buy products immediately via Amazon’s 1-Click feature or add items to your Amazon shopping cart to then be purchased later through the Amazon.com website. Bezos insisted on the ability to manage your shopping cart and checkout on the Fire TV itself, so the shopping feature has been postponed. I’m told it’s not uncommon for a team within Amazon to work on something, get it mostly done, and then have the feature/project pulled or cancelled by Bezos. While the Fire TV’s full-fledged shopping feature likely won’t be released in time for the upcoming holiday shopping season, Amazon has started using parts of the shopping feature to allow Fire TV owners to buy select products through banner ads on the Fire TV’s home screen. Read on for a spotlight of this new limited shopping ability which gives us a good indication of what the full shopping experience will be like once it arrives on Fire TV devices. Read more ›