Amazon is shutting down its Underground Actually Free store, the company announced, eventually taking away its customers' access to free apps that they'd have to pay for at other stores.
At the end of this month, Amazon won't accept new apps from developers, and by this summer, it will end customers' access to the Amazon Underground store for Android devices.
For now, apps that have already been downloaded will still be accessible to Android smartphone users, however, Amazon Digital Marketing Manager Becky Young wrote in a company blog post. Customers will continue to have access to Underground apps that they have already downloaded, until the program is discontinued in 2019.
It's not clear exactly why Amazon is shutting down Underground, but it wouldn't be much of a surprise if Amazon were diverting the funds invested in that service to pay for other parts of its business, like growing its Alexa voice assistant's capabilities.
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