Amazon Lobs a Missile at Google

Amazon has introduced a free Android application that makes it easier for Android users to shop online at Amazon. The app, already available for iPhone and iTouch users, has an extra cool feature dubbed Amazon Remembers. This lets you use the phone's camera to snap a photo of an item's bar code and, in that way, add it to the your online Wish List.

Amazon Remembers will also allow a user to snap a photo of the object. Amazon will then use image recognition technology to search for similar products available. Amazon App for Android, as it is formally called, also includes all the other features you would expect in a mobile browser version of the company's online sales app. For instance, it supports 1-Click payments and can access a user's order history.

Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile, said in a press release that the app was built due to customer demand for it. Hard to see how many customers have been pounding at Amazon for this app, given how few Android phones have actually sold yet. But Android remains a hot technology that will see increasing adoption as more apps arrive for it..

On the other hand, Google has antagonized Amazon with its controversial Google Books deal, which will not only sell digital versions of books, but do so on a platform that competes with the Kindle. (Google just can't seem to get enough to taking on the titans in their proprietary niches.) Amazon is therefore smart to come out with an early shopping app for the Android device.

In the end, this is good old fashioned competition at work and the winner is the customer, who has now been given more choices. An alternative exists to the Kindle and Amazon, and to Google Books, Google's the Sony eReader and Google's shop comparison app, Froogle.