Amazon’s A9 vs The Rest
p2pnet.net News:- Amazon justifiably has a smile on its face – and that could be because it stands a better than even chance of doing well – very well – in the Search Engine stakes, so far led by the likes of Google (of course) and Yahoo, with Microsoft coming up fast.
Amazon’s A9 is clean, fast and simple. And very cool. Even the url is good – www.a9.com. You can’t forget it and it’ll automatically show up right at the top of saved bookmarks.
A9.com remembers searches and tells users if a search is new or has previously been clicked on [Clicked 2 weeks ago ] [learn more]
Every search is stored in a History column, organized by time, and you can switch between previous searches and sites visited.
"With the A9 Toolbar, the list of all sites you have visited is accessible the same way," says Amazon.
"If you open the history column on a search result page, it will give you search results of your own history followed by a list of your entire history (as well as from your bookmarks and diary)."
The only but – (and it’s a Big But, no pun intended ; ) is you have to register with an A9 account to get these goodies.
If you’d, "prefer not to be recognized on our site, we recommend that you use our alternate service located at 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."
A9 is worth a look. And watch for the clickable pix that appear on the right.
September 18th, 2004 at 7:22 pm
don’t forget amazon users who have an amazon account get 2% off their next purchase if they use A9.
if you worry about real name address, what you’ve purchsed etc being linked to your online surfing habits I’d forgo A9.
The generic site removes the bookmarks, history, diary etc so any benefit of using this engine over others isn’t worth it, in my opinion. Search powered by google, alexa and A9, images by google, movie database by IMB, etc.
I tried it out, resizeable windows and images on the same page is nice but the idea that they know I like midget porn and bought hacking exposed on amazon.com, just doesn’t sit well with me ….
September 18th, 2004 at 7:46 pm
Ohmygod – you like midget porn TOO!!!??? We MUST trade emails.
But seriously, A9 might appeal to the same kind of people who buy music from Itunes, etc.
September 18th, 2004 at 9:52 pm
I know some who are excited about it. I just have a huge issue with my information being tabulated, correlated, run through various mechanisms and eventually turned into a commodity to be used against me later. Its what advertisers do, watch people, hold focus groups all in an effort to “sell” more. I don’t see this as being much different. Some things you cant avoid (much to my frustration) like my save on foods card which offers discounts for card holders. Ah remember the days when a sale was a sale no strings attached?
I thought everyone liked midget porn or was that naked klingon women
September 19th, 2004 at 1:37 am
I just have a huge issue with my information being tabulated….
I guess that is what the generic A9 is for. And NO – I don’t work for Amazon.
And Yes! Klingon women are OKAY, as long as they have been sedated! hehe
September 19th, 2004 at 10:19 am
Here is the rub. This may sound “off”, that I am more critical of one but not the other.
The touted “strength” of this new search engine is largely to do with the storing of your searching history. It stores when you have searched for a page (and will tell you when you did the search), stores the information (both searches and urls visited) in a personal history column.
Google,for instance, works by typing in a query and the browser returns the result, nothing else. A9 tracks your searches and builds a profile of your searches and site visits then uses that to build on a “personalised” search. Great so far I like the idea. The toolbar offered also factors into this, in fact the toolbar tracks all sites visited regardless of whether you use A9 for your searches or not. The claim is more you use A9 the better it becomes and you would have to in order to get a accurate profile of your searching habits. This personalisation is where it stands out from other search engines. I don’t care that they know my screen resolution, browser used, OS used, IP, country of origin, what terms I used to perform a search, last sight visited. I do care when it becomes Anne Sharp visited x,y and z today. They could perform this personalisation for the user without name, address, credit card information and not have it tied into a amazon.com account. (I had to create a A9 account because I don’t shop at amazon – so it is possible to fogo the personal information. I just supplied a email address, moniker and password)
Finally, the rub. The generic site cant store anything, you can’t even change preferences; moderate image search is always on, can’t modify which languages you want to do your search in. The searches done will have results very similar to searches done on google. So what is the point?
Side note. part of the potential power of this search engine is what they call “discover” which finds sites you might be interested in based on your previous searched AND the searches of other users of A9.
ps: most likely repeated earlier points – notorious habit of mine, wasn’t done cause I didn’t think you got the point
more my worry I didn’t say it right the first time.
September 19th, 2004 at 2:12 pm
That is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. Amazon is tracking your web searches. Don’t fall for this privacy invasion tactic.
September 21st, 2004 at 3:55 pm
I agree, what is the point? I can’t say I’m knocked out with this as yet. I’ve only been trying it out for a few days so i’ll give it a couple more. I have also been using blinkx for a few weeks. blinkx automatically links information from files on your hard disk, and can suggest content from news sites, the internet, video and blogs. I must say it’s very fast and seems to be more advanced than A9 at this stage. let’s wait and see.