A9 Search Engine Launches Yellow Pages

vmalik writes "The A9 search engine has launched a Yellow Pages service, and the listings in major cities include photographs of the storefronts. The site also contains information on how they did it. It seems to be pretty good with lots of store images and driving information from MapQuest."

Comments

nobody uses A9

[Anonymous Coward]

A9 is like Google and Claria combined, with webbugs, click tracking and paid inserts all tied to your Amazon cookie which is tied to your credit card
it only exists to maximise Amazon and their partners (those who pay the most) revenue

at work we classify A9 as a "severe privacy threat" and therefore it is blocked at the firewall

Re:nobody uses A9

[cgenman]

it only exists to maximise Amazon and their partners (those who pay the most) revenue.

So... how is this different from most businesses? Not to be a free-market fundie or anything, but at least one of the motivations for all businesses is to earn revenue. A9 has decided to earn revenue for it's owners by providing better features to and tighter tracking of it's customers. However, I fail to see how what A9 is doing is different than the paid inserts or supercookie that Google uses, or for that matter the wealth of info that Yahoo keeps on it's customers. Some businesses can be said to only exist to increase revenue for their owners. Look at all of the old software that is "supported" for the sake of businesses at extortionist rates and without any updates. Compared to them and a lot of other software businesses, A9 is pretty customer-focused.

I hate to say this, but if people keep spouting words like "severe privacy threat," when actual severe privacy threats (like Claria) arise, people won't listen.

A bit inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

Its view of what is a storefront is a little odd, I put in Chicago and hot dogs and got pictures of empty parking lots, cars, caribou coffee, and no image. But none of those I views seem to have a hot dog place yet.

Of course Mapquest has had me driving into the lake many times but maybe they need to add pattern recognition to there pics for error checking, there should at least be a building in the shot :o)

Re:overjoyed

[Enigma_Man]

Why? I see nothing remarkable about that at all.

-Jesse

Slow....

[MasterOfCeremonies]

I agree, the project is insane. It is inherently inaccurate and unmaintainable in the long term. A9 certainly has some very nice features, my problem with it is that these features slow the whole thing down so much (at least over the lake here is Australia). After being used to the lightning speed of Google I find myself impatient with A9.

Yellow pages?

[Underholdning]

This is not a yellow page searh. This is a web search with some added functionality. There's a big difference. If I search in a YP for "restaurant ohio" I want a restaurant in Ohio, not a lot of webpages about "ebook - the secret about Restaurant Ohio in Mexico".

Ok, it's not bad

[digitalgimpus]

Though I do wonder how useful that will ever be.

It's not perfect, and the landscape is constantly changing. How often do they plan to refresh? How will they even do that?

A block in NYC can change dramatically in a year. Kind of hard to keep those pics up to date. Take a building down, put a new one up, or just remove the scafolding, and it looks like a different block.

Just my $0.02, but I think keeping that up to date and useful is going to be nearly impossible.

Re:Current and ACCURATE?

[Saige]

And if you look at the pictures of the street, when you scan over them, there's an option to select one of them as the 'best photo'. I presume that would alter which is shown to people.

Even if you don't know the business, that scanning over the street is sure to help you find the location, since now you can see what's around. And even if you've never been there, if the actual business is in a different photo than the original shown, you likely can help select the proper one for it.

They were able to get things close when using the GPS and such. They're relying on people using it to get things more exact - which is fair, since they're not going to be able to get everything correct automatically.