When Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, recently announced the line of Kindle devices coming out in mid-November of 2011, he mentioned the Android-based browser, Amazon Silk, that will be a main feature of the company’s new $199 tablet, the Kindle Fire. Since then, more details have become available, and it’s apparent that Amazon sees the true potential of cloud-based apps.

Their designers have developed the first browser that will make extensive use of the cloud to speed delivery of web-based content to Kindle Fire’s users. The Amazon Silk browser relies heavily on Amazon’s EC2 cloud infrastructure.

Basic browser design hasn’t changed much since the mid-1990s, when large desktop PCs ruled the day, explained Amazon software engineer Peter Vosshall. The end user’s device has always done much of the heavy lifting, such as contacting a distant server, setting up the initial communication, negotiating a download speed, receiving the information files, and displaying them in their full file size on the monitor screen.

With the development of mobile computing devices, this model is becoming increasingly inadequate. Handheld gadgets are being asked to process the same amounts of content once done exclusively by tower-driven PCs with ultra-fast processors and huge amounts of RAM. Over time, this has led to an overall slowdown in how fast data can be loaded to and displayed on devices such as tablets and smart phones.

Amazon’s answer to this dilemma: share the load between the Fire and the cloud, according to Brett Taylor, chief engineer in charge of developing the new browser. Think of it this way: if the Kindle Fire is the IT equivalent of a tiny, mom-and-pop store, then Amazon’s cloud is the giant big-box super-mart sitting behind it. It handles the hard work of ordering the smaller retailer’s stock, arranging shipping, receiving it at the warehouse, unpacking it from the storage crates, and putting it on the shelves for mom and pop’s customers to see and purchase.

What’s more, the cloud anticipates what web sites the Kindle’s owner will want to visit and preloads that information, ready to send to the device. For example, if a Kindle Fire owner reads the Wall Street Journal’s daily web edition, it will be loaded onto Amazon’s servers prior to the customer going online, ready to be transmitted as soon as they type in the URL. When he or she does it goes out instantly, shaving as much as several seconds off of the time it takes for the image to appear on the tablet’s screen.

Amazon’s cloud even adjusts display quality to reduce file size. For example, if a page looks just fine with only 50K of information, it adjusts how much it sends to the tablet to show only that much, further decreasing transmission and upload time.

“There’s a lot of great innovations we’re really excited about with this new browser,” says Taylor. “It’ll seem like a traditional browser, just a lot better and a lot faster than what you’re used to working with.”

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