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.

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

I thought everyone liked midget porn or was that naked klingon women

But seriously, A9 might appeal to the same kind of people who buy music from Itunes, etc.

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 ….