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Comment by scholia | Hacker News Reader

> all the Amazon Fire products are Android based

They are based on AOSP, but Amazon is expressly forbidden from using the Android name, and it can't use the Play store, so it's not really in the Android (TM) market.

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>but Amazon is expressly forbidden from using the Android name

source?

While the documentation itself is available to you under the Apache 2.0 license, note that proprietary trademarks and brand features are not included in that license. Google's trademarks and other brand features (including the Android stylized typeface logo) are not included in the license. https://source.android.com/license.html

Android is a proprietary trademark wholly owned by Google.

See also: Leverage over manufacturers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29...

maybe I'm dumb but I'm missing the part where Android is a proprietary trademark.

The term Android is not trademarked. Even the bugdroid is released under a cc-attrib license. Funnily, the term 'droid' is trademarked and licensed by lucasfilm/disney mostly.

I remember that being a thing when the droid phone was first launched.

> The term Android is not trademarked.

Google quote: "Android™ should have a trademark symbol the first time it appears in a creative."

Brand Guidelines http://developer.android.com/distribute/tools/promote/brand....

Yes, I do know who you are -- in fact, we have met -- but Google should not be using Android™ if it's not trademarked ;-)

I agree, obviously. Lemme look into it.

Oh, derp, I was thinking of something else. That makes a lot more sense (that We'd trademark)

;-) No probs. Thanks for checking.

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