Amazon's New A9 Search Engine

Amazon has released a beta search engine called A9.com. Powered by Google, it searches the web as well as providing access to Amazon itself. The interesting and controversial feature set shows that Amazon is thinking about how people use the web and organize information. However, because use of the service requires logging in to your Amazon account, it raises real privacy concerns. It might be worthwhile creating a dummy account for searching if you plan to make this your primary search engine.

Search Inside the Book: 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 clear 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.

This last feature includes an A9 Toolbar that you can download that has the usual Google toolbar features such as history of past searches, site info, and pop-up blocker, as well as what appears to be a new feature, a diary that allows you to take notes on web pages you visit.

Posted by Tom on April 18, 2004