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." "

Re:A9 Search Plugin for Firefox

[Patik]

Alternatively, make a bookmark for http://a9.com/%s , right-click on the bookmark to edit its properties, and give a keyword like "a" or "a9". Then just type "a searchterm" in the address bar to search.

Re:Weird findings regarding IE

[TwistedSquare]

Not a single link to IE on the first page of results for "web browser"? Fishy.

Actually, if you search google for that there isn't either. Must be a terminology thing, or no-one rates IE as a worthwhile web browser so its not high on the pagerank...

Also note...

[ackthpt]

They redirect and try to trap you from backing out. How refreshing. One of the web page practices I most despise.

Check out the Cache.

[flynot2000]

Funny damn thing, as the cache links don't go to A9, but are still against Google's cache.

Amazon eh?

[evil-osm]

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 [a9.com] and got this [216.239.57.104]

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.

Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required

[orthogonal]

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.

You make a very good point.

And note that the Amazon page carefully says that you can "hide" an entry -- not that you can delete it.

But please remember that Google already logs your IP address and search terms; so presumably thus means that now both Google and Amazon will be keeping tabs on you.

a9 has a big problem

[cr@ckwhore]

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.

Re:Ads

[SphericalCrusher]

Google built on top of Yahoo? What? They both use two different ways to search the internet.

Yahoo with its meta tags and Google with its linkback system makes them two different search engines.

Re:actually looks really good

[tyler_larson]

Ugh.. what a hideous color scheme. It took quite a bit of intestinal fortitude to get myself to actually do a search.

And then it just got worse.

Early thoughts

[BSDevil]

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.

Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required

[Minna Kirai]

As if you couldn't find history in Mozilla...

Mozilla history is stored on your local harddrive. You can easily delete it completely, or just disable the recording.

A visible history in the search engine will be something else- not only do you have no straightforward reliable way to delete the records, but the records could follow you around from home to job and back.

Re:URL Short cuts - cool!

[zulux]

I think this is extremely cool. A short way to enter queries by even bypassing the home page completely

KDE's broswer lets you do this:

google:query text

it works with other search engines besides Google as well.

Re:a9 has a big problem

[gavcam]

Back button works fine for me in IE 6.0!

Re:URL Short cuts - cool!

[Acy James Stapp]

try
google/search?q=your+query

Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required

[orthogonal]

Yeah, the fact that they don't provide direct links to the pages also throws my paranoia into overdrive

I was going to give you a Proxomitron script to convert these nosey links into real links; in doing do, I took a look at the page source for Amazon's search.

I found a few very interesting things:

var newloc = "/-/search/loadHist" + search;
openInHiddenIframe(newloc, document.getElementById("histContent"));

It look as if one's private search history is sent, in the clear (without SSL encryption) to a hidden frame. Good luck keeping it private if someone else administers the proxy server you use.

Consider that you log in to Amazon's search: will logging into Amazon search from work mean that the IT guys at work get to see the searches ("gay tentacle anime") you made at home?

Other goodies from the page source: function loadDeferredImages(). I don't know what this is, but is a deferred image anything like a pop-under? It uses NoSetTimeOut-->NoNoSetTimeOut-->NoNoSetTimeOut-->N oNoSetTimeOut-->NoNoSetTimeOut-->NoNoSetTimeOut--> NoNoSetTimeOut-->NoNoSetTimeOut to do the deferred load.

Now, maybe this is all benign, and it's just bad programming (apparently they're using JSPs) that inefficiently does work on the client using javascript. But I'd rather be skeptical now than find my search history being used to market to me.

Oh, the Proxomitron script to convert these links to straightforward links; note that it exempts Google and wikipedia.

Name = "Un-Prefix URLs (RK modified) and leave original too"
Active = TRUE
URL = "(^www.google.com|groups.google.com|*.wikipedia.or g)"
Bounds = "<a *>"
Limit = 256
Match = "<a (*href=)\0("|)\1(*(/|\?)*)\2(('|)http(%3A|:)(%2F|/ )+)\3([^&;=>"*]+)\4\5("|)>"
Replace = "<a \0\1\2\3\4\5\1><font size=1 color=red>[orig]</font></a>\r\n"
&nb s p; "<a $UESC(\0\1\3\4\1)>"

Umm...

[mgcsinc]

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!

Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required

[morcego]

Okey. Have any of you actually tested a9.com ? They only keep that data if you actually log in to it.

As far as I see, this is a pretty optional feature. Don't want it ? Simply. Don't log in.

No sex in the champagne room...

[Anonymous Coward]

or on A9. Seems they're blocking "adult" content too.

Re:Smells like consumer profiling engine...

[dalelane]

hmmm.... but have you seen generic.A9.com [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! :) )

Re:People who searched for "warez" also read...

[bobbis.u]

It doesn't display any results, but clearly it does find them. Look at the bottom and you can still jump to all the blank pages that would contain results (warez "returns" 11 pages).

Nice bug... erm, I mean "feature".

Built on or built in

[Bon bons]

...A9 is built quite literally on top of Google

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.

Be sure to read the terms of service

[mattmcal]

As Mark Jones points out on The Industry Standard [thestandard.com], the terms of service indicate there may be some personal data you weren't planning on sharing heading back to the Amazon databanks:

"By collecting URLs, A9.com tracks and collects a record of users' web browsing activity within and across websites. A9.com also collects and stores other user information you give A9.com"

Re:People who searched for "warez" also read...

[LostCluster]

Nah, that's simply what Google returns if you search for "warez" with SafeSearch on. [google.com]

This is ALEXA

[vrioux]

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

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said Google was built on top of Yahoo? I missed that.

It's right there in the text. "What makes this particularly noteworthy is that A9 is built quite literally on top of Google."

Of course, the submitter obviously does not know what literally means.

It's missing one of my favourite google feature!

[1arkhaine]

That being define:word, a fantastic tool I use 20+ times a day, hell maybe even 30+. It's the primary reason for why I even go to google - though I've found that www.dictionary.com sometimes gives me words google doesn't.

On that note, does anyone have a defintion for encarnadine? Google doesn't so I'm stumped!

Terms of Use

[Arachn1d]

Hasn't anyone noticed their Terms of Use [a9.com], where they say:

If you submit material to A9.com, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant A9.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant A9.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose.

You certainly won't catch me submitting anything to them (once the option is presumably available)

Re:Porn

[damiam]

a9 just uses Google's results, with SafeSearch turned on.

Re:On Linux, Again

[damiam]

Google GWS is, IIRC, an Apache fork

Re:Ads

[forevermore]

Actually, look at the search results. In both of my test searches ("1u server" and "blade server"), the results are identical with those from google. So in this case, I'm pretty sure that "on top of" means that they're not only using Google's engine for searching, they're also using Google's databases.

Re:People who searched for "warez" also read...

[Wanker]

...too long since i've played that

You can live it all over again. Check out:

http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Yes, it's Open Source now. ;-)

Address Bar Searching

[JCholewa]

> Earth to google ... get in easyier[sic] address bar searching

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

Site Info Spam Increase

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny that nobody seems to be concerned that that site-info-button takes you to a page that

1. displays the site-maintainers email adress in plain text, and
2. displays the site-maintainers postal adress.
   

The former will definetly increase the daily dose of spam in the mailbox and the latter will lead to even more after-work-phone-calls trying to sell you some stuff. It will not only be Amazon who'll use the gathered information for marketing purposes. I'd bet that right now some SpamAdressSpiderProgramm ist written that makes use of those new and shiny "features". Farewell privacy!

Re:Yahoo is Google.

[anti-trojan]

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?).

From the Privacy policy

[gingerTabs]

"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...

Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required

[leviramsey]

Furthermore, you can delete specific searches from your history.

Re:Ads

[Andrewkov]

On the front page there is a link, "7 reasons to use A9". Check the last point:

Search Inside the Book(TM): In addition to web search results we present book results from Amazon.com that include Search Inside the Book. When you see an excerpt on any of the book results, click on the page number to see the actual page from that book. (You will need to be registered at Amazon.com.)

Adjustable Columns: Simply drag the boundaries between the columns either to the left or the right to change their width of the different result sets (web, books, history). You can also close any column at any time. The next search will remember these new settings (if you allow cookies). This feature currently does not work on all browsers (but we're working on it!).

URL Short Cuts: At A9.com you can search directly from the browser URL box by typing:

a9.com/query

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.

Site Info: Place the cursor on one of the Site Info buttons to see a lot more information about that site without leaving the search result page.

Web Search: Web search results are provided by Google.