A9, and Counting

Amazon’s A9 search engine got a lot of blogging attention last week (Following John Battelle's break of the news). Here are some of my thoughts on it:

First, it’s a very smart move by Amazon for a number of reasons. There aren’t many companies who could leverage their way into search at this point, but Amazon can. If they decide they like this and really promote it to the 40+ million regular users of their shopping site, it’s an instant factor.

More importantly, the shopping engines – including Yahoo Shopping, Froogle, and Shopping.com – are direct competitors for Amazon. Sure they are listed in all of those, either organically or with paid positions, but those sites send lots of shoppers to places that aren’t Amazon. By adding a vast network of other retailers within Amazon – including 3rd parties who compete directly with the Amazon on price right on the Amazon.com site – they’ve proven that they just want a cut of the transaction and don’t really care who ships the goods. But people are getting used to the idea of a shopping search engine, and they don’t think of Amazon that way. But they will be able to when the hard-core shopping stuff gets added to A9. (Don’t worry, serious shopping search tools just gotta be coming.) Amazon does not want you to think 'Froogle' first when you sit down to shop online. It's one of the few things that could really hurt them.

It’s also a great use for the somewhat under-utilized Alexa. I love the Alexa toolbar, but the site itself – which always did provide search features and used Google results just like A9 does – felt like a half-hearted effort. A lot of Alexa could use touch ups and minor improvements, but I’m not sure they ever had that much reason to do it. I bet it gets folded into A9 and gets the attention it deserves. On this subject, it sounds like the excellent ‘other sites like this one’ feature of the Alexa toolbar isn’t in the A9 toolbar. Why? (I’m basing this on what I’ve read as I haven’t installed the A9 bar myself yet.)

It’s also nice to see someone pushing search forward with something other than algorithm tweaks. (That’s not really fair to lots of 2nd or 3rd tier search engines, I know.) My guess is these guys got unlimited rights to use the Google core when Google wanted in bed with Amazon and onto the Amazon.com site, and now they get the benefit of letting Google do the hard part and they get to spend their dollars innovating. Smart. For all their faults Google results seem to be ‘good enough’ for most people based on user trends.

That said, I hope what we’re seeing is just the very beginning of how they intend to add value. Remembering searches is nice, and obvious. How the hell did Google skip that one all this time? Now start remembering which sites I went to when I did the search. If I go back to an old search, it’s probably because I want to go back to a site and found and forgot to bookmark. Why make me visually scan the darn list again? Taking this further, please build both local and online bookmark management in, and hot new features like OnFolio has. In other words, manage what I’m looking for and what I’ve found and decided to keep. People use Google a million times a day because lots of people don’t bookmark, and bookmarking sucks in too many ways to mention. You want to lock me in – fix and own my bookmarks and I’ll never stray. That’s an investment.

I’d also like MORE data on the results page. Why books but not music or other products. I don’t mean the ‘search inside the book’ When I search ‘Elvis Costello’ I get book links right onto pages on Amazon.com. Why not Music or DVDs or whatever fits the query. Certainly that is only a matter of time. I also WANT the paid Adwords. Bill Gross was right – the person willing to pay the most to get seen is relevant. To me these Google results feel incomplete without the Adword ads.

All the talk of collaborative filtering being discussed is certainly attractive too. Many of the best Amazon features are the ‘other people who bought this liked’ and ‘here’s what people recommend instead / in addition to’ and reviews. All of these can apply well to web sites, and Alexa already most of this anyway.

My comment on all the ‘privacy’ concerns is this: give it up. Nearly everything interesting that happens online from now on is going to involve:

• Remembering what you do
• Connecting what you do to what others do (both those you asked to be connected to or those connected to you via some pattern matching)
• Adding contextual advertising based on what you’re looking at or who you are

If you don’t want the benefits that come from these things, fine. Don’t get a Gmail account. Don’t sign in at A9. Etcetera. But please don’t complain and call your congressmen, and generally whine so that I can’t enjoy these benefits. Companies should have to tell you what they’re doing. You should be able to not participate. But saying that no company should be able to offer features just because you don’t want to use them, is as asinine as saying people should't be able to talk about things on radio stations you can choose not to listen to. Oh, wait a minute…

I hope we see lots of constant innovation from A9, just like we’ve seen from Amazon.com. I don’t think the search engine wars are going to be won by the most ‘relevant’ results, they’re going to be won by the best search environment and the most ‘sticky’ features. As a result, despite their late start, I give A9 a shot at the crown.

Update: Interesting look at A9 from a usability viewpoint here at whitespace.

Posted by Craig Danuloff at April 17, 2004 09:50 PM