Amazon.com has unveiled its own internet search
engine, A9 run through an independent subsidiary compaby,
A9.com.
The search engine seeks to take on Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask
Jeeves with a product that provides a more personalised search
experience. For example, it allows users to create a history of
their web searches and manage the information they find.
Amazon.com created A9.com in October 2003 to research and build
search technologies. The official version of the A9 engine builds
on the beta version released in April, and uses Google's database
and algorithms coupled with its own search features. It also
provides reference results from online reference library
GuruNet and movies results from the Internet Movie Database.
A9 search results are organised in columns that expand from left
to right to reveal web pages, images and reference material. Other
features include bookmarking capabilities, a toolbar for browsing
search results and what A9 calls its "diary", allowing users to
record, save and reference notes about any web page.
Another feature, which is currently in the beta stage, also
recommends sites based on users' past preferences.
The A9 search engine can be accessed from its own website, from
the Amazon.com site or through its toolbar.
A9.com is reliant on the technology of its main competitor,
Google, which claims to perform more than 250 million searches a
day. Along with using Google search technology, A9 also displays
the syndicated Google Adwords advertisements, with the companies
sharing revenue.
It is an arrangement similar to the one Google has with AOL and
that it used to have with Yahoo, according to
SearchEngineWatch.com's editor Danny Sullivan.
"Google powers lots of people it is also directly competing
against. Google knows it cannot be everywhere, and by allowing
other places to carry its paid and unpaid listings, Google is
making money," he said.
The A9 search engine dialogue box on Amazon's website could
prove useful to the shopping portal, as users often begin online
shopping sprees by running a query through a search engine. But
apart from supplementing its shopping site, Sullivan said it
remains unclear what Amazon.com hopes to achieve by entering the
already crowded search engine market.
"Amazon.com has in the past downplayed the idea that it is
competing with Google. But there is a potential there and it does
have a stable of great talent developing the technologies,"
Sullivan said.
"Amazon.com sees A9.com as a worthwhile proposition and it
really is like a little sandbox for them."
Udi Manber, who began at Amazon.com as a vice-president and its
chief algorithms officer, serves as A9.com's chief executive.
Before joining Amazon Manber was the chief scientist at Yahoo.
Manber was also key in developing Amazon's "Search Inside the
Book" results, a full-text archive of over 100,000 books Amazon
digitally scanned. The feature is also included in the A9 search
engine.
Sullivan said, "It may be that [Amazon.com] will come up with
some patents and it could make some money that way through the
licensing or the selling of that technology," he said.
Laura Rohde writes for IDG News Service