Amazon.com Quietly Opens Software Download Service

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Amazon.com has launched a software download section in their software store. While the product selection is small - meaning, limited to TurboTax products - the fact that they built a software downloader application means that this is not the end of the story.

Install the downloader (in the sidebar on the RHS) and then you can either buy and download the TurboTax products or, as I did, try their free trial download to “get the experience.”

After you buy the product, you’ll get to a point when you download the actual file. You’ll actually start to download an .AZD file (Amazon Download?). You can Open or Save; you’ll want to Open. Then it opens the downloader and it’ll ask you where to store it (default is in a folder called “Amazon Downloads” in your My Documents folder). Click Start Download and you’ll see the progress above.

Yes, in case you’re wondering it works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Once you buy something it goes into your Amazon Media Library so you can redownload it later.

We Say: Of course, why bother with a downloader when most packages people buy that are downloadable are small. Unless Amazon.com has something else in mind, right?

We’ll wait and see, but this was one quiet launch.