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Amazon's Search Engine Goes Live
fjordboy writes "John Battelle has posted a discussion and review of Amazon's new search engine: a9.com. From the article:"What makes this particularly noteworthy is that A9 is built quite literally on top of Google. In short, Amazon has taken the best of Google, and made it, to my mind, a lot better. Sound familiar? Yup, it's what Google did to Yahoo, Yahoo to Netscape...you get the picture." "
Hmm Google - a search engine that displays ads, Amazon - an ad that displays searches, oh yeah that's gonna rock.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
From the 7 Reasons to Use A9.com:
Search History: All your searches at A9.com are stored on our servers and shown to you at any time from any computer you use. Clicking on a link performs the search again. You can hide the window at any time and a password will be required to open it again. You can edit your history, for example, to hide an entry.
Click History: If any of the web search results include a site that you have seen before, it's marked on the result. We even tell you the last time you visited that site.
You don't have to be among the tin-foil hat crowd to have a low regard for this "feature". There are just some searches that you *don't* want to remember.
It's not a stretch to imagine a situation like this:
Boss: "Google me some info on our competitors."
Lackey: "Check out this new A9.com search!"
Boss: "What's that link there? I didn't know you were interested in goats... [Click] Damn! You're fired!"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
This really doesn't seem to be much of a breakthrough aside from the fact that they are running your serarch past Google, Amazon.com and Alexa at once and presenting a unified interface.
This is like an infomerical from Amazon trying to pretend to be programming. I'll take my Google straight, and go to Amazon.com when I want to go shopping, thank you very much.
...somethings are just good enough.
So I searched for Windows and hovered over the site info for the Internet Explorer Home Page (the second result), and the bubble that pops up says:
So people are looking for IE but turn to Mozilla instead? Are people searching for "web browser" and clicking on Mozilla out of interest?Here are the top links for "web browser": Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, Opera again, Safari, Lynx, Galeon, Netscape, Anybrowser.org, and evolt.org.
Not a single link to IE on the first page of results for "web browser"? Fishy.
There's a search history viewable to the user. So just when various senators, the EFF and half of /. were getting uppety about Gmail's ability to connect a name with a search history, Amazon do the exactly the same.
In fact, they go one step further - with Google's email you can always lie about your detals, but with Amazon's history feature you can't - it's tied to your Amazon account, credit card and all.
Of course, I Have Nothing To Hide, but I still think that comapnies shouldn't put themselves in a position where they have a load of juicy data that the police only need a warrant to get at.
It would have been smart for Amazon to keep this feature offline for a few weeks to get a better idea of how well google deals with the criticism.
foo mane padme hum
I hate to say it, but the site looks really slick. The search history, site info, diary feature, book searching are all really clever ideas. But this takes the whole Google privcy debate to another level doesn't it.
Color scheme kind of turns me of tho'
I whipped up a quick A9 Search Plugin for Firefox.
"...Amazon has taken the best of Google"
Taken the best? I don't mean to sound like a troll, but it looks like a blatant ripoff of Google. Maybe this just means that everything about Google is the best.
Everyone should run this search just to break in their search engine.
Amazon's search engine can't even add 2+2... Google on the other hand can do combinatorial mathematics.
Amazon's "Inside the Book" search engine is a very interesting thing.
If you only need to see a paragraph to know what you need to know, you have no reason left to pay for the rest of the book.
However, most of the returns are from fiction books, so maybe you're better off just sticking with Google and saving this as a fallback only.
Sounds a bit like asking a certain president to invade your country to help you find some WMD you mislaid.
Ok, I'm cynical, but it's my turn dammit.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I searched the following keywords:
sex:
a9.com: about 8,610,000 hits
google: about 216,000,000
goatse:
a9.com: about 9,930
google: about 41,
amishrakefight.org/gfy
a9.com: about 211
google: Sorry, no information is available...
Statistically, 2/3 of the time you are better off using a9.com
-Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Man, what does that 9 stand for? It isn't "Amazon".length, that's 6. As far as I can tell, there aren't 9 things that start with A related to this. Any ideas? I wish we could Search Inside The Programmer's Head to find out what on Earth it is.
Shameless self promotion
While they say that they might be better, there what looks to me like clutter.
"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to
add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Google got this right.
That if you click Site Info for a search result, it shows Alexda data on Amazon.com?
That sort of doesn't make sense, as my website isn't a product they sell.
That CSS file that blocks ads
Amazon the next Google?
David
and patented it. Litigation begins tomorrow.
They're running some serious anti booty filters.
Try this:
Google: 'suicide girls' (you know you've been there)
Now a9 'suicide girls'
Hold the two results up next to one another. See?
Try this with other, ahem, keywords.
Does anyone know the origin of the name? It seems like they just started enumerating domain name strings starting with null until they found one that wasn't taken...
...
a1.com? no, steak sauce.
a2.com? nope. taken.
a3.com? porn site.
a9.com? unregistered. dude, we've done it!
I used to use altavista as my search engine way back when. Then, they decided that thier users were less important than thier customers. From there after about 8-9 months of use and being set as my homepage - I dumped altavista for google.
Google has proven over and over again that thier primary concern is for thier users. They have found ways to make money via ads that in no way interupt the user. New features are constantly being developed that will benefit users.
[side note: I am planning on signing up for gmail and using it as my primary webmail app. I do not consider it an invasion of privacy if I see an add for serial cables when someone sends me an email with a set of rs232 pinouts. I actually find it to be a unique situation where both google's users and customers can benefit]
Now, look at amazon. This is a company that has decieved users numerous times. Anyone remember the price mismatches between repeat customers and new customers? How honest is my search going to be if I look for '+"golf club" order online'? Something tells me I'll end up at a amazon.com page.
I understand that a similar situation could occour with froggle. The fact is it has not happened in either of them yet. However based on reputation, I would bet it would happen with google last.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
I searched for Blowjob and got 0 results WTF?
How about 1 reason not to use this crap: CENSORSHIP.
OO, the new trend in all things computing...
OOP
OOSE
prOOfit
A9 is not live. Amazon still has it in beta. Hence the words, BETA next to A9 on its home page.
Every Super Villan uses Linux.
when i click my scroll wheel to do quick verticle scrolling, the page doesn't accept it and won't let me do it.
this is because the page is littered with "onclick" this and "onmouseover" that so the action is ignored by IE.
this is BAD.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I noticed that under their 7 reasons to use A9 they have this:
::sigh:: windows only :(
Site Info: See information about the website you are visiting, including related links, site statistics (including traffic rank), sites linking to this site, and user ranking. Select from the menu to go to the site's page on Amazon.com where you can get more information and write a review about the site.
I hoped that there would be a mac version (The only thing I miss about switching to OSX is there is no way I can get the google pagerank of my website and others) so I could at least have an easy vague sense of a website's importance, but when I clicked through...
-Colin
Brings to mind windows 1.0-3.x's relationship with dos.
Nope. Didn't like them either.
I might have missed something, however, what is to stop Google from doing a Micro$oft move and just incorporate said features?
The article after all does hint that this could be just another cat and mouse game.
Google took Yahoo.. took away all the lame "portal" crap that was the "craze" then.. rewrote a whole new, better search engine, and set it loose on the world.
Amazon took the stripped down look of Google, tied it into their marketing, and set it loose on Slashdot.
Here's proof of how bad this search engine is. I searched for 'porn' and didn't find any! I'm on the 5th page of search results and still nothing. what kind of search engine can't find porn on the internet?
here's Google's (rather curious) cache
Show me an A9 cache of Google's cache and we'll talk...
I don't feel like trusting any of these corporate guys, there should be plenty of ways to make a completely open, distributed search enegine, the way it should be made.
They redirect and try to trap you from backing out. How refreshing. One of the web page practices I most despise.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does that hurt anyone else's eyes besides mine?
Read the "Reasons to use a9" linked here.
I bet they could build a pretty good profile on what interests you.
Now if they only had some type of online store that could sell you something, they could really clean up.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
As usual, emacs finds its way in there, even for web browsers! (and before IE is mentioned). Look here to see what I mean. (I do realize that emacs isn't a web browser, but still...)
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Seeing how I can type gg:query in Konqueror to search Google, that beats a9's "short cut" feature by 5 characters. In firefox you don't even have to type anything at all, just use the Google search box.
Granted, you could also add a9 engines to both of these, but then it would just be on par with Google anyways.
Point is this is only useful to people who still use obsolete older web browsers like IE.
I like that they used a beta symbol for the B. I wonder how many people will notice.
-Colin
Funny damn thing, as the cache links don't go to A9, but are still against Google's cache.
This is a nice way for amazon to upsell their own products. Do a search on a9.com, click on the Book Results tab and you see links to amazon products. Plus Google is using a9 for adwords distribution. This new search engine is a pretty good opportunity for amazon.
Funny in all the 9 years or so that I've been
on the net I don't recall going to Yahoo even
once... Google however, I wouldn't know how to pass a single day without it.
MP3 Search Engine
Well here's the google cache for it...
Take that!
Hmmm I was going to be funny for a second, but then I tried a9's cache of googles site and got this
Seems that they are using Google's cache, and simply re-directing users to Google.
Meh, I guess thats what a beta is all about.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
The thing I use most with Google is the image search. As an artist I need reference photos and things, and it appears A9 doesn't have an image search (how is this possible?). I cannot believe they went live without an image search. IMHO this isn't that great at all.
Ok, so A9 is supposed to be "better" than google? Well, on my first search on a9 just a moment ago, I searched on "amazon sucks" (completely irrelevant to this post) ... and then pressed the "back" button on the search results page. Well, guess what?!?! A9 has a back-button-trap making the "back" button basically useless on their site.
So, they're supposed to be better than google? What about google's clean, simple, no BS web design approach? That's google's value!! Don't you get it Amazon?!?!? Well of course not! Take a direct look at Amazon.com and you'll get an idea of Amazon's design principles.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
To me, the best thing about Google, the reason I'd use it even if they fell down to Xty place in the Search Engine race is simply the announced, honest desire to not do evil.
How unique and wonderful was it when Google released their search engine with no ads, a clean interface, and no loathsome sponsored links? Even when they introduced ads, they made sure they're clearly labeled as such, and made entirely of text.
In short, Google treated me as a person, and not a pair of sticky eyeballs. Meanwhile, Amazon has long been known to be well acquainted with the Not-Not-Evil path -- remember the patent on one-click shopping?
Even Google's missteps have been honest. They have a cookie on their site and probably log searches, and Gmail may have privacy problems, but still, Google is probably the least evil for-profit tech company I know of.
I'll admit that I'm watching Google pretty closely at the moment to see what happens with Gmail, but honestly, so long as they're up front with users about what they're doing and don't try to bury the permission clause in the TOS language, I'm fine with it. I even had an idea for a kind of art project, a voluntary, massive, transparent clipboard sharing project, that I've given serious thought to implementing that would probably be worse than what Google's doing, but I still think it'd be okay so long as the user knows it's a privacy concern ahead of time, and has his attention purposely drawn to it, preferably with big red letters. In fact, for me that'd just increase Gmail's cool factor, as I'm so boring that any federal investigators looking at my mail would only get a good laugh and 100k of spam for their trouble.
A google front-end that changes links into tracking links.
Certainly interesting at first, but the colours and layout make my skin crawl. It just doesn't seem as instantly usable as Google, it feels cluttered.
Add to that is far slower then Google, yes I know it's being slashdotted right now, but that never slowed down Google.
I'm sorry, this just ain't going to be a winner. Now if Google were to incorperate some of these new features such as detailed site info that might be a good thing.
What are they thinking making every graphic and headline a shade of the same pukey orange color? Just beacuse they have an orange arrow as part of their logo doesn't require every freakin' thing to be orange!
I won't use A9.com just because I'd become nauseated looking at it.
Well, since my site still ranks #1 and #2 for the appropriate keywords with A9, I like it.
The "Site Info" rollover is very nice, it gives a bit of pre-click background about the page.
Seems like every search engine is offering some kind of Toolbar/Deskbar these days. Does anyone know if the deskbars are all built on Dave Bau's original open source project?
Similar to Google A9 is running on Linux. But isn't it the first time a [major?] search engine [to be?] is running Apache?
Amazon.com => A9
.com to the end...I guess A5.com didn't sound cool enough or was already taken.
"A" plus 9 more characters.
But then you go an add a
I want a people who visits this page also visits hustler.com when searching for microsoft.
Start your a9 bombing now.
alphanumeric perhaps - A for alpha 9 for numeric!
Searching for my software money pit "Klassy Software" returns the license page for an old product information site for my HTML editor Net Weasel as #1, an old "about us" page as #2, and some rants of mine on Slash Dot as #3. Funky.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Does anybody really WANT Amazon to be storing our searches on their server forever and a day? Even the "edit history" feature apparently only allows you to "hide" old entries. This sux big time!! I guess it's a marketing ploy.
And here are the Way Back When Machine's results for a9.com.
Any web engine where software I wrote comes up as first result when searching for an eggtimer is ok with me ;-)
And no I didn't google bomb it or anything.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
As someone mentioned, the searching from the address bar is brilliant. And while I don't have that much of a problem typing in google's search location (when I'm not using FF), this is just that much slicker.
They also censor their results. Hardcore. As an indication, a9 give zero results for "hardcore" whereas google gives somewhere in the area of sixty million. While I'm sure that the bulk of them are porn, I'm not sure how much I trust a9's censors. Search engines already miss enough of the web - I don't want them purposefully hiding more of it.
And I can't stand "sponsored links" in line with real results. I know it's small, but I love how with google I can look at the left side of the screen for "real" results, and the right side of ads.
Earth to google: you've got nothing to worry about. But get in easyier address bar searching, and bring back than plan you mentioned a while ago to place fulltext copies of lots of books in your database, and you're golden.
Cue The Sun...
Quote:
"built quite literally on top of Google. In short, Amazon has taken the best of Google, and made it, to my mind, a lot better."
Okay. I don't follow your mind, though. It struck out on my choice arcane search terms (stuff that will generate two or three hits in Google or Profusion).
I also don't follow the "literally on top". The "suicide girls" search, suggested above, returned around a tenth of the number of hits in a9 compared to Goog. *shrug*
http://a9.com/litigious%20bastards turns up trumps on SCO.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Maybe it's a really bad play on K9 as in your canine info retriever. Yeowch.
ALTAVISTA
A23456789
If I search "2*3" with google, I get 6. The same search with a9 returns whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com
This may sound like a silly thing to say, but "a9" just doesn't have the ring to it that "google" does.
It sounds like one of those sites you access by typing in the IP address, and those are usually shady, heh.
Apart from the lack of the features mentioned in the posts below, the visual interface is nothing to write about either.
Keep working on it, Amazon. It'll only make the folks at Google work harder, and make it better.
EXACTLY.
I think the nine is was used because of audi and it's cars that make an a3,(not for the us market) a4, a6, and and a8. I beleave they have made an a1, a2 and an a5. But I could be wrong.
they tried to get a1-a8 but all those were taken.
Already used A9's Feedback form 3 times: first about the bobble that doesn't come on gecko bases browsers, second about not validating with w3c, and third about the back button.
I suggest you do too. I wonder if the listen.
The article seems to suggest A9 as a Google killer.
Somehow, I don't think that the Google killer will license Google's search.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
grrr...
Disclaimer: I typically don't wear a tinfoil hat.
A few days ago, I clicked on a Sponsored Link from an Amazon product page. It's already on my Visited Sites page on a9.com.
This is vaguely hinted at on Amazon's privacy page, so I can't properly vilify the bastards.
It's still in beta, but so far it doesn't impress.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Umm, just dor the sake of it, "Yup, it's what Google did to Yahoo" is absurd; Yahoo was running google technology, not vice versa!
Is it just me or does it break the back function in Firefox?
Go to a9.com, search for something, and press the `Back' button of the browser, or check the history. Is this a feature? (Tested only on Firefox)
Besides, Google's toolbar lets you save your recent searches anyway, that's nothing new, and it saves you the five seconds that it would take to type "google.com" or "a9.com/..." for you lazy people out there.
The only reason Amazon did this is because they want more people to shop at Amazon and use their search engine (obviously). It's been tried a thousand times before. Google won the preference of millions because the ads aren't obtrusive and they weren't in the business to try to get you to shop somewhere, or join a pay service, or any of that crap that Yahoo and MSN does.
I'd say Google wins. :)
Domain name registration for $8.79 per year
879domains.co
IE comes with Windows and no one needs to search for it and download! Remember thats y Netscape sued M$ ??!!
-ItsME
It looks like a cross between a porn thumbnail gallery, and those link to everything pages that domain parkers use. Ugly.
The ability of google to group things from the same site together is a gem, which allows a better chance to find what you want, IMHO. (Where you get a little link to click to see more results from x site).
So my search for some well crawled site brought up first page of links from the same site.
And come on, the colour isn't exactly easy on the eyes.
No Thanks.
Ask and ye shall receive. Amazon giveth search without search history.
http://generic.a9.com
or on A9. Seems they're blocking "adult" content too.
Direct search url not "google.com/search?q=words+here", but instead "a9.com/words+here".
How many years have I been using A9 as an abbreviation for my nickname!! I should have bought up that damn domain!
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
We're talking about two different things called "Yahoo" here. The first thing is the original Yahoo web directory. Which is totally useless, 'cause it's just not possible to track the web with any kind of manually-maintained system. So Yahoo the Web Directory lasted only long enough to attract the venture capital they needed to become Yahoo the Portal. And a Yahoo search is just a rebranded Google search.
Not only is it built on google, but links to Google's caching system. Try for yourself, any cache link you click on A9 takes you directly to google's cache of the page.
The war has just started between Google and Amazon. The A9 site is really good, fast and eye candy. I doubt Google is going to take time to reply and add the A9 cool features.
I particularly enjoy the Find Related Books link, as I buy lots of books.
that G.W. Bush and Kerry were both members of the same occultic fraternity (Skull and Bones) at Yale, only two years apart? Bush claims that he never knew Kerry while at Yale, and Kerry claims that he knew Bush during that time. Who is lying, and why?
1) It's slower (already been said)
2) It uses redirects instead of linking to the site
3) For some reason, my autoscroll from my middle mouse button is disabled on the page. How the hell did they manage that?
In the beginning, there was archie and veronica and WAIS, and information spread freely across the land. Then the "web" came along, and there were search engines. There was the venerable Internet List, and then there was Yahoo, and it was good. In time, though, the directory structure of Yahoo! was overwhelmed, and AltaVista took over as the premiere "search engine", as they were now called, and people could find web pages across the globe. and the wise people at Altavista prevented the disaster of a new Tower of Babel and created the Babelfish to let us read German technical manuals, and we all prospered. But even in this golden age, AltaVista could not see high enough over the web to present search findings, and new, pointy-haired bosses added portal weight to it, and altavista was no longer worth it.
But Google dawned, bringing the power of information back into the hands of the people, and we could all see again, even though the light was blinding.
Then, A9 was presented, and tried to capture the glory of Google, but well, it sucked.
~the end~
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
There seem to be some privacy issues already. Just turn off your cookies and for goodness sake don't 'sign up'.
But for my money, the A9 GUI blew it. It's just not nice. I get a good feeling @ Google - this looks pale, fuzzy, cluttered - and confusing.
Besides, it's only Google anyway - it's not like Vivisimo - so I'll stick with the actual supplier for now and ignore this impertinent middleman.
For now...
First result: Amazon
Go to a9.com and search for 'books'.
First result: Barnes and Noble
It has potential.
There's already a little something called Froogle. If it ain't broke......
"Took Google and made it a lot better" he says...
I don't know about that. Looks like nothing more than Google with a different color scheme/style sheet. This isn't a new search engine, its a new (another!) reimplementation of Google's search...
Running text sideways ("beta", "open book results", etc) in a horrible design flaw IMHO. About the the home page, it feels very empty to me. The elements don't have proper weight so its hard to know what's important and what's not. I think amazon needs to put more effort into design if they want to succeed.
Now if only they had thumbnails like www.dhund.com
Khurram Khan
Did anyone of you see that this is absolutely not a new search engine, but only a front-end to Alexa's crappy and mostly copied search engine ? www.alexa.com
"To be or not to be"
...
Google:
To BE or Not to BE, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
http://marriedadults.com/bariumenema.php
Amazon:
HOT or NOT? - www.hotornot.com
I really hate Dan Patrick.
On that note, does anyone have a defintion for encarnadine? Google doesn't so I'm stumped!
... w/o all that annoying cleanliness!
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
Point is this is only useful to people who still use obsolete older web browsers like IE.
My first encounter with a Quick Search feature was back when I used IE as my primary browser. I'm sure there are others that remember the add-on pack Web Accessories for Internet Explorer 5. It let you do the same thing, assign a shortcut, replace the %s for the search term. I don't know who did it first, but I first learned about it through IE. I do prefer Firefox now, though.
As a side note, MS's tool (which is not being developed further) cut off the length of the URL you could use to a very unusable length of characters. To circumvent this, you had to do some registry editing to get the URL in there.
alexandria...
a zon.ht ml?pg=1
check this out:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/am
Forgive me for not reading the article, but why does nothing come up when I type in porno? This is the Internet, isn't it?
If you're a fan of women, add me to your friends list.
...then click site info... amazon is fairly generous letting us know what they think of their new competitor.
Direct Link Here
Interesting eh?
Out of the ( hundreds? ) of people I know who use Windows / IE, I can count the number of them that
.. on one hand. That means 5% of all the potential Windows / IE users I know would have absolutely no use for this at all.
- Don't use the Google, Yahoo, or some other toolbar, and
- Don't use an "enhanced" IE with a built in firefox type search box, like MyIE2, and
- Know enough about the internet in general to know that there are search engines besides MSN
And unless I am living in some weird oasis, I doubt that my sampling is that far off from the general windows community at large.
In general, you're either a) The type of person who uses MSN for everything because you know nothing else, b) Savvy enough to download a search toolbar or enhanced browser, or c) Savvy enough to use Mozilla / Linux.
People in category (a) are not the type of people who type in URLs manually; they would never use this thing and it would be of little use to anyone. Maybe 5 years ago it would have been, but Amazon has missed the boat.
So it's apparent that the content is filtered fairly heavily. While this is a no go for most people, this seems like it might not be a bad default search page for younger (pre and grade school) crowds, and perhaps libraries. A search like "Kinetics" turns up identical results in both, while the results of "porn" are markedly different. It seems that most of the content could be reasonably rated "R" at worst. Of course, this opinion is only from a cursory usage.
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
I searched for f***** company and voila look at some of the results which come up www hp com www 3m com www ge com www ford com www fastcompany com www xerox com I dont know how they made it out. anand
Kerry says whatever is convenient. Do you really believe he will create 10 million new jobs? (consider for a minute that there are only 5.6 million unemployed) Do you really think he will cut taxes for 98% of people? (consider that Bill Clinton promised that in 1992 and immediately raised taxes) Do you really think he will cut the deficit by 50% in 4 years? (consider that he's proposed billions in extra spending while promising most programs won't be cut)
In the site info, it lists an ASIN number for each page!
what's next? referral fees? it's funny that all web pages are suddenly inducted into the same numbering system as *products for sale*.
try typing the single-word query "search" in a search engine. There's only one that seems to place themselves at the top of the list. I think they all have an inferiority complex (as they should).
Cunt: no, cuntlick: yes
cocksucker: no, cocksuck: yes
asshole: no, assholes: yes
think they're blocking certain specific words
> Earth to google
Um, Every single graphical desktop web browser in the universe, save for one (yeah, THAT one), supports keyword features that make it completely pointless for individual websites to bother. In Opera, since last millennium, you could type "g bunch of search terms". Mozilla could be easily configured to use the same syntax, or you could change the keyword from "g" to something else (like "IWannaKnowMoreAbout bunch of search terms"). Konqueror does it like "gg:bunch of search terms" (and, I think, "g:bunch of search terms" to do the "I feel lucky" thing on Google).
I have Opera set up with a few custom keywords. If I type "def someword", then the browser does a search on dictionary.com for "someword". Useful feature. Totally pointless for the feature to be built into the website. Unless you're using a web browser with a 1990s feature set, like lynx or IE.
--
-JC
coder
http://www.jc-news.com/parse.cgi?coding/main
from http://www.a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp "Web Search: Web search results are provided by Google." So how can the search results be better than Google's?
Oddly, "I WANT TO SEE JEFF BEZOS NAKED" returns about 5,210 hits. "I WANT TO SEE JEFF BEZOS FULLY CLOTHED" only returns about 281 hits. Very strange things afoot indeed.
"Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons
The former will definetly increase the daily dose of spam in the mailbox and the latter will lead to even more after-work-phone-calls trying to sell you some stuff. It will not only be Amazon who'll use the gathered information for marketing purposes. I'd bet that right now some SpamAdressSpiderProgramm ist written that makes use of those new and shiny "features". Farewell privacy!
In dream society, people could be given the ability to mod replies. In real life, it would be disaster.
Its just a different front-end for google's search database. Try to search for 'google' in google.com and in a9.com check the link for cached page. For a9 : http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J: http://www.google.com/+google&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF -8
For google :
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:zhool8dxBV4J: www.google.com/+google&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
And it goes to google after that :)). Nice integration with book site and history can be useful. Earlier also search engines tried to introduce concept of save this search
--
God only tests us, he doesn't know how to debug.
A9 = algorithm = 9-letter word starting with a.
Something like i18n = Internationalization = 'I' followed by 18 letters followed by 'n'
Or "Algorithms". Or "Alexandria".
TweakUI for Windows XP has a nice GUI for creating a URL shortcut. One of my shortcuts is 64 chars long. According to Jesse Ruderman, IE limits Favorite URLs to 508 chars, so it seems like TweakUI follows this behavior.
"Amazon-whacking" sounds a bit too risky to me.
I know the truth and I know what you're thinking
A search for "book" turns up BarnesAndNoble.com BEFORE amazon.com.
With all of the other things they are doing to cheat, you'd think they could get that one right.
I won't use a search engine that keeps my search history forever.
"PLEASE NOTE THAT A9.COM IS A WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF AMAZON.COM, INC. IF YOU HAVE AN ACCOUNT ON AMAZON.COM AND AN AMAZON.COM COOKIE, INFORMATION GATHERED BY A9.COM, AS DESCRIBED IN THIS PRIVACY NOTICE, MAY BE CORRELATED WITH ANY PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION THAT AMAZON.COM HAS AND USED BY A9.COM AND AMAZON.COM TO IMPROVE THE SERVICES WE OFFER."
Caps weren't mine by the way, it's exactly how they appear in the privacy policy. At least they're being honest about cross feeding information...
Is it only me who immediately read a9 as short for asinine?
Dont make a better sig, you insensitive clod!
Blood-red. More commonly spelled incarnadine.
Jolly good. I was ready to fulminate at this sloppy usage, when I noticed your response.
Much... calmer... now.
I don't know if anyone pointed this out, but they say right on their site that their web searches are provided by google they are simply adding "services", which IMHO are crap. Look at it here
They are using a BAD adult-content filter. For example, a search for "Penthouse" gives ZERO results. What if I'm not looking for the magazine? What if I'm looking for architectural stuff or something?
If you ask me, their adult-content filter (which is not an option, it's just forced on you, and there is no notification of it anywhere) makes this a BROKEN search engine.
A quick Google fight tells us that google is the winaaaar. Although google vs Amazon is not so good.
I can't access that site from Israel for some reason.... even if I try accessing their IP directly.
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
By clicking on the site info button next to a search result, you get the site info page up with screenshots, reviews from users and "people who liked this also this like this".
Obvously well rooted in google
http://a9.com/litigious bastards
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
...a search for 'computers' gets apple.com in first place.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
http://www.proxomitron.info/
It simply is not being developed any more by the original author, Scott Lemmon. The heart of Proxomitron is not the program itself, but rather the excellent filter sets that people keep refining.
Here's the set I consider to be the best:
http://www.jd5000.net/
And here's some forums with constantly evolving filters:
http://www.computercops.biz/forum-cat14.html
http://www.cheatandwin.com/~proxo/forums/
Visceral Psyche Films
A search engine from the website that has one of the worst website search engines ever? Hmmm. Have you searched for a book on Amazon lately, since they've "upgraded" their search engine? It not only searches authors, keywords and titles...it also searches every blessed word of every book in the inventory. Result? Any given search will return a zillion results, about five of which might be useful.
Think I'll stick with Google.
There are many reasons A9 can't harm a fly in google's office...reasons follow..
1. It is based on google, the day google pulls their own search OEMing to Amazon, it literally dies
2. It is far slower than google itself, maybe because it pulls data from google's servers in the backend.
3. the design isn't as accesible and simple as google is. any good designer will tell you a brown background isn't the best way to read text. That itself turned me off from visiting it again.
4. it is far heavier than google when it comes to "HTML and Image Dowwnloads per page". Google is a total of 19k for a certain search, and A9 is over 42K for the same search, while it shows the exact same links and content.
5. Google has a great brand recall. A9 isn't a name people will find easy to remember as compared to google, which has become a part of the language itself now. Can you imagine people saying "A9 it" instead of "Google it". Nah!
and again ... yuck! these guys think they can get revenue from advertisers that pay for this stuff. let's see if this flyes or not.
... sounds familiar.
Tin foil hat VERY required if you go anywhere near their toolbar. The terms and conditions should turn any reasonble persons brain to jelly:
http://toolbar.a9.com/-/company/toolbar-tou.jsp
In summary:
1> They will collect the URL of any/all pages you visit.
2> They 'may report any activity it suspects violates any law or regulation to appropriate law enforcement officials, regulators, or other third parties'
Since anything you do uses the toolbar (because it reports the URL) and they don't even have to be right (just suspect) a violation that pretty much covers everything. Then they can report it to any third party they like.
Guess what - read the terms and conditions and then hit 'cancel' (quite hard)
So how does this improve over Google? The domain is 4 characters shorter. Otherwise, it's slower and packs less of the information I want into a bigger space. When will search engine providers figure out that people who are interested in particle accelerators may not want to buy one from Circuit City?
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Foo: If you've got nothing to hide...
Bar: Why do I need to have something to hide in order to want privacy? Can't I simply desire to prevent others from gathering unnecessary information on me?
My definition of "liberty" includes the right to explore the boundaries... and sometimes, to step on the other side.
When I was younger (in the '80s, statute of limitations has long passed, heh), I did my share of vadding (long before I ever heard the term). Technically, I was trespassing -- got caught once, while still in high school, and were my parents ever pi^Wupset!
I sure wouldn't explore those places now -- I'm older and I know better. But would I have known better if I hadn't checked out the limits when I was young?
Online, there are places that probably shouldn't be found (goat-related links are just one eye-melting example). But truthfully, I'm not terribly worried about my teens finding the goatse guy -- because once they know how bad it can get, they'll be much happier back in the "safe" zone.
Contrast that with the self-appointed mavens of online "decency", whose worst online experience was the face on Janet's nipple, and therefore want to regulate everything into blandness.
Of course, this is threading away from the main topic, the A9 "I Know Where You Surfed Last Summer" search engine. I guess the risk is that A9's all-seeing eye could become the norm, rather than the exception. At least we still have Lance Cottrell on our side.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
> Rocky Horror, several specific roleplaying
:)
> terms, etc.
If I didn't already know you were a dork... I'd call you one.
-ac [no, this *is* my real identity...]
It's old news. Philipp Lenssen had the same idea at FindForward. FindForward also lets users comment on sites and encloses the site's thumbnails (captured from Thumbshots).
They lock you out after you do a certain number of searches. I was using this for student guide answers for a class but after probably 10 searches or so they locked me out for that book.
"two different ways to search the internet" ???
That's probably why they offer the same results, right?
Try this searches for the example 'Amazon sucks':
With Google the Search Engine
With Amazon the Merchant
With Yahoo the Christmas Tree
... not because the results are so good (they are the same as on Google), but because A9.com breaks your browser's back button! From A9.com, as soon as you did a search, you cannot go back anymore!
or perhaps "algorithm" :-)
Go Illini!!!
I can't remember all the different search engines Yahoo has tried. But if you want to know which one they're using currently, just run the same search on Yahoo and Google.
And who says that doing two different things can never end in the same results?
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Ok, but then why talking about differences?
For the user it's not different search engines.
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