With Amazon's recent takeover of Comixology (the most popular digital comic book distribution system), there have been some major changes to the shopping experience; they're not welcome changes, either. Lets start with the smaller story and work our way up from there. Over the weekend, ComiXology updated for all Android devices. The payment options for in-app purchases are different. Before, you purchased everything using the Google Wallet system, connecting your Google account to your ComiXology account for easier shopping.

Now, there is no more Google integration. Everything has switched to Amazon payments. This might not seem like such a big deal, but it is a terrible inconvenience for users.

The only way to purchase through the app story on Android devices was Google's services. If you didn't want to put your bank or credit card account in Google Wallet, you had to buy a Google gift card. Now, if you purchased one of those just for use on ComiXology, you're out the value of the card without warning. The change was made before alerting anyone that a change was coming and that's bad business.

Now for the bigger outrage: iOS devices no longer have in-app shopping. You cannot purchase comics in the ComiXology app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod any longer.

We knew this change was coming. Amazon has routinely punished iOS users for not using Android devices. They want you to use their payment system for everything and that's not an option if all your money is funneled through the iTunes store.

The largest comic app for reading and purchasing comics no longer allows you to purchase comics if you have an Apple device. It's kind of outrageous. It would be like if Amazon decided that Kindle users just wanted to read, not shop, from their devices, so they eliminated the ability to buy books anywhere but on a computer.

In the grand scheme of things, unannounced massive changes in service on a comic book app is a pretty small thing to carry on about. For comic readers who embraced the ease of digital distribution, it's a much bigger deal than you might imagine.

Take me, for example. ComiXology is how I got back into comic books. They offer a bunch of free titles for signing up for an account and I branched out from there. I check the sales and new curated collections every week to see if there's an older title I want to catch up with for significantly less money.

I also have subscriptions tied to my Google account for payment because I couldn't use other payment systems on the website or in the app. Now, I'm going to have to switch everything over to my Amazon account. I've had to change payment options before through ComiXology and it's a pain; all my subscriptions were cancelled because a gift card balance didn't cover a book coming out the next week even with back-up funding connected to my account. It was such a frustrating experience, I let some subscriptions slide for two months before going back in and fixing the ridiculous interface problem on my end.

It's bad business to make this kind of change before alerting customers. That's what it comes down to. Amazon took the best comic reader/shopping application available and destroyed its reputation is a few days. It's quite impressive if you think about it. A 5 star app is now 1.5 (and dropping) in iTunes because a reading and shopping app is now just a reading app.

Via Bleeding Cool.