Now, Motorola has come out with a statement, and it says that the behavior was unintended. The tech giant confirmed this in a statement given to 9to5Google, adding that the behavior has now been corrected.
Here’s what Motorola had to say:
Motorola and Device Native jointly developed an app search and suggestion experience for the Moto App Launcher, designed to help users quickly find and launch apps they already have installed on their devices.
Recently, Motorola acted quickly to resolve an issue that was identified, which caused some users in the U.S. launching the Amazon Shopping app to be routed through a web tracking link before opening the app. This behavior was unintended and resulted in an inconsistent user experience.
Upon identifying the issue, we promptly corrected the routing configuration. Users can now expect all installed apps to launch directly as intended.
Motorola takes user experience, privacy, and platform integrity seriously and will continue to closely monitor the system to ensure expected behavior across devices.
We are committed to responsible disclosure, and to transparent, collaborative engagement with researchers to identify and address potential issues swiftly.
The statement confirms that Motorola worked with Device Native to develop the Smart Feed app. This is interesting because it is Device Native, an ad-tech firm, that the Amazon requests were going through.
For what it’s worth, we’re not really pointing the finger at Motorola, or even Device Native, here. It’s unlikely that a mega corporation would inject affiliate links to collect pennies, relatively speaking. And that, too, via such a glaringly obvious flashing browser window.
This is very likely a classic case of buggy code pushed to the stable app without proper testing. That is just my speculation, though. Motorola hasn’t shared an official reason behind the fiasco.
Are you still seeing the same behavior when opening Amazon on your Motorola? Let us know in the comments below.
