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I've just noticed that those two, which I have completely no use of, are part of the common package. This means I cannot remove them without removing everything. But I like all the other webapps, GMail, Docs and so on. I just don't want Amazon popping up in my launcher when I go there once a blue moon and not leaving until I turn Firefox off. Is there any way I can remove it without removing the rest?

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The common package does not itself contain any software, only dependencies. Your only problem ist, that by removing the common package (which you apparently have to do, if you want to get rid of amazon) tghe package manager sees no need anymore to keep all other applications. Because it considered them just a nasty dependency of common in the first place.

You can safely mark the commons package for removal and mark all packages you want to keep for installation. Depending on the package manager you use, you can do this in one step, before executing the change, so the packaging system will not remove, redownload and reinstall any software. It will just keep everything you marked for ... keeping.

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As for your original question, why Amazon et. al. is included in commons in the first place... Thats probably because Ubuntu is turning evil or something. (SCNR ;-) – Paul Hänsch Oct 27 '12 at 17:06
Oh no, I'm not worried about Amazon being by default. It's just the fact that removing Amazon removed all - that's why I was worried. If not for the fact there's no Amazon here, I'd probably keep it. But I just sometimes check Amazon for new book releases, so I find the webapp unnecessary. – DoDoGo Oct 27 '12 at 20:15
And as to the answer: I tried doing that, and then reinstalling the other, but that pulls common back in. Which means I still get Amazon in the list of webapps. – DoDoGo Oct 27 '12 at 20:16
There is probably some package recommending common without really depending on it. Try the terminal program apt-get for managing your software: Open a terminal and type sudo apt-get install common- gmail+ docs+. This defines what you want to keep and what to remove in one run. Well actually I am not sure that these are the actual package names (I don't use Ubuntu myself). Maybe someone else can give a hint on that. Close the software center and all other package managers befor running apt-get. – Paul Hänsch Oct 27 '12 at 21:43
Or maybe you can switch off treating recommendations as dependencies in the software center. This would definately be easyer. I can't help you find this option though. – Paul Hänsch Oct 27 '12 at 21:44
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As discussed in the comments to the previous answer (by Paul Hänsch), the Amazon webapp is part of 'unity-webapps-common', and all the other 'unity-webapps-*' depend on 'unity-webapps-common', so at this time there is no way to remove the Amazon webapp without removing the rest.

However, I just discovered a way to disable the Amazon webapp, without uninstalling it, so you can leave other webapps installed and not be bothered by the Amazon webapp.

  1. open 'dconf-editor'
  2. go to 'com>canonical>unity>webapps'
  3. edit the "preauthorized" field to say just '[]' (or remove 'amazon.com', and any other desired domains from the list)
  4. visit www.amazon.com
  5. when prompted to "install Amazon", tell it "Don't ask again".

I found these instructions here:

https://twitter.com/ghalfacree/statuses/269760421437775872

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