Amazon's Search Engine Goes Live 402
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." "
Oh that's real nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, they go one step further - with Google's email you can always lie about your detals, but with Amazon's history feature you can't - it's tied to your Amazon account, credit card and all.
Of course, I Have Nothing To Hide, but I still think that comapnies shouldn't put themselves in a position where they have a load of juicy data that the police only need a warrant to get at.
It would have been smart for Amazon to keep this feature offline for a few weeks to get a better idea of how well google deals with the criticism.
actually looks really good (Score:3, Insightful)
Color scheme kind of turns me of tho'
Search the text of some of Amazon's bookstore.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you only need to see a paragraph to know what you need to know, you have no reason left to pay for the rest of the book.
However, most of the returns are from fiction books, so maybe you're better off just sticking with Google and saving this as a fallback only.
It seems a bit lacking (Score:2, Insightful)
"Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to
add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Google got this right.
URL Short cuts - cool! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Weird findings regarding IE (Score:5, Insightful)
No one tells anyone to go "get IE". Everyone who can have IE already HAS IE, for better or for worse. No need to link to it. As a result, the pagerank of most "Download IE" sites (uh, Windows Update???) would be remarkably low compared to the number of people who link to Mozilla et al.
Re:Weird findings regarding IE (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The people most likely to search for "web browser" or anything related to IE's homepage are most likely looking at alternatives. Most folks looking for IE know that the first thing to do is type "www.microsoft.com" and go from there.
2) Not very many people look for IE online in general
3) Microsoft doesn't market IE as a "web browser" online, it is a Windows component and as such would have far different content indexed than that of any of the listed browsers.
4) The search results you mention appear in almost the same order if you search for "web browser" on Google. Is that Fishy to you, too?
5) There ARE things about A9 that seem fishy
Privacy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course if you disable the Amazon and A9 cookies then you loose the search inside and history "features", which is most of what A9 offers over Google.
Disabling the tracking is a nice feature. Wish you could do that with Google. Sure, google doesn't tell you what your history is, but they know.
Re:lazy name selection (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon.com is 10 characters long...or A plus 9 more.
A5.com (A + length(mazon) +
Re:I'll stick with Google, thanks. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Weird findings regarding IE (Score:4, Insightful)
"the internet" lists IE as the second hit, microsoft
Re:URL Short cuts - cool! (Score:2, Insightful)
provided at the top of Safari?
Re:Reputation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Weird findings regarding IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Offtopic: I wish Slashdot wouldn't run ads (such as the Dell one I'm seeing nearly every page load) that interferes with my typing of comments. I'm mid comment when it steals focus from the textarea. Not nice!
A Google Killer (Score:3, Insightful)
Somehow, I don't think that the Google killer will license Google's search.
Forget the bells and whistles- Does it Find Things (Score:5, Insightful)
It's still in beta, but so far it doesn't impress.
--
Evan
Amazon is just power hungry like the rest of them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, Google's toolbar lets you save your recent searches anyway, that's nothing new, and it saves you the five seconds that it would take to type "google.com" or "a9.com/..." for you lazy people out there.
The only reason Amazon did this is because they want more people to shop at Amazon and use their search engine (obviously). It's been tried a thousand times before. Google won the preference of millions because the ads aren't obtrusive and they weren't in the business to try to get you to shop somewhere, or join a pay service, or any of that crap that Yahoo and MSN does.
I'd say Google wins. :)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tinfoil Hat Not Required (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I need to have something to hide in order to want privacy? Can't I simply desire to prevent others from gathering unnecessary information on me?
Re:Nice touch (Score:4, Insightful)
They should have just used the beta symbol on it's own or spell the english variant. It's like "IRC Chat" or "ATM Machine" or "LCD Display" or "CGPColinGregoryPalmernet"
Some people...