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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." "
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
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.
Not really fishy.
No one tells anyone to go "get IE". Everyone who can have IE already HAS IE, for better or for worse. No need to link to it. As a result, the pagerank of most "Download IE" sites (uh, Windows Update???) would be remarkably low compared to the number of people who link to Mozilla et al.
Random and weird software I've written.
Not really at all.
... it is "just there" and is updated through Windows Update. Related to #1, if they are having to research IE they are probably doing so in some form of technical aspect.
... I agree with other posters who think storing search history is not something I want to see done ... but I don't think the results you mention are.
1) The people most likely to search for "web browser" or anything related to IE's homepage are most likely looking at alternatives. Most folks looking for IE know that the first thing to do is type "www.microsoft.com" and go from there.
2) Not very many people look for IE online in general
3) Microsoft doesn't market IE as a "web browser" online, it is a Windows component and as such would have far different content indexed than that of any of the listed browsers.
4) The search results you mention appear in almost the same order if you search for "web browser" on Google. Is that Fishy to you, too?
5) There ARE things about A9 that seem fishy
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Of course if you disable the Amazon and A9 cookies then you loose the search inside and history "features", which is most of what A9 offers over Google.
Disabling the tracking is a nice feature. Wish you could do that with Google. Sure, google doesn't tell you what your history is, but they know.
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Something like that....but not quite.
.com) may have been their first choice but it's already taken.
Amazon.com is 10 characters long...or A plus 9 more.
A5.com (A + length(mazon) +
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
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
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If you've got nothing to hide...
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?