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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
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...
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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...
And that, ladies and gentlemen is the executive summary for The Life Of A Slashdotter.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
http://a9.com/litigious%20bastards turns up trumps on SCO.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
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.
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
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!
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
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.
or on A9. Seems they're blocking "adult" content too.
hmmm.... but have you seen generic.A9.com?
:) )
On generic.a9.com, we will not recognize your A9.com or Amazon.com cookie. Information we gather on generic.a9.com will not be used in our data analysis (other than to detect abuse) and will not be used to personalize the services we offer you.
surely they deserve bonus points for that....
(plus the colour scheme aint so bad on generic.a9.com - reason enough to prefer it to regular a9!
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.
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
First result: Amazon
Go to a9.com and search for 'books'.
First result: Barnes and Noble
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
On that note, does anyone have a defintion for encarnadine? Google doesn't so I'm stumped!
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."
> 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
Yahoo search used to be a rebranded Google search. About a few months ago they rolled up their own search engine (technology still provided by someone else. Inktomi?).
Virus infects both Windows and Linux!
"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...