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Amazon's A9.com Search Engine Goes Live

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the competition-benefits-everyone dept.

scapermoya writes "Today was the official launch day of Amazon's A9.com search engine, which has been in public beta for some time now. It uses results from Google, and adds some personalized features, like bookmarks and search history. Its Java-heavy inteface reminds me of Gmail, which is nice. It doesn't seem like it was designed to supplant Google, but rather to flesh out some things that a certain demographic of people might like."

4 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. Two problems... by neiffer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I see two problems with this. First, let's face it, since they are searching text of Amazon books, it's an ad site. Sure, it's useful, but it's an ad site. Second, I tested it by typing "Helena" (my home town, the state seat of Montana) and there isn't a single picture of Helena, Montana among the first page but rather pages of women in swimsuits. I don't think adding images without asking for them adds much to searching, that's why I like Google as I can pick the content.

    1. Re:Two problems... by psyco484 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Because I hadn't used it before and didn't need to search for anything, I just typed in asdf. The results contain a weird picture that may or maynot be 'safe for work.' They should think about incorporating google's safesearch if they want to include images with every result. Definitely can't use this search engine from anywhere but home if there's a chance a pair of tits are going to flash on the screen when I'm searching for something from the library or my workstation...

      Other than that it seems to work as expected (I'm not noticing the problems other firefox users are complaining about?), maybe in another few months.

    2. Re:Two problems... by ClippyHater · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Guess it depends on what's useful to you. I know a bunch of folk who despise google. They don't want to "learn" how to use an efficient search engine. They want buttons to do the majority of things they're interested in. They want a search history so that if they're repeatedly looking for things, they can find it.

      What's interesting to me is the meta data they have on sites. For instance, I typed a search on Gentoo, and, of course, the Gentoo home page was first on the list. But then I saw a "Site Info" button next to the link. Clicked on it, and was taken to an Amazon (?!) page that told me semi-interesting facts about the site. For me, very cool!

      With the A9 toolbar, the site becomes even more useful to those folk it's targeting. The ability to take notes on sites seems like it could have interesting possibilities.

      Anyway, I think the sites pretty useful. Since I have broadband, the "bloat" doesn't bug me one bit. I also compile modules into my kernel :)

  2. as someone said last time... by fresh27 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...A9 is pretty bloated. It looks nice, but its a little too much for me compared to the slick and minimal style that Google has. A search for 'America' yields a 52.64 KB result page in A9, while that same search yields a 4.36KB page in Google. Size isn't necessarily a problem for me, but I think A9 is trying to pack too much stuff into what should be a simple process. If I want to find movies, I'll go to IMDB, if I want to find books I'll go to Amazon. A9 complicates it rather than simplifying things.

    --
    http://ipod.fresh27.net/