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The Internet Businesses

Amazon to Take on Google? 196

Posted by michael from the one-click-searching dept.
KRck writes "Looks like Amazon is going to jump into the search engine business and try and compete directly with Google, by building a new company A9 which they hope to launch in October."
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Amazon to Take on Google? More

Amazon to Take on Google?

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  • What's next? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane AT nerdfarm DOT org> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:29PM (#7068001) Homepage Journal
    SCO? RedHat? How many companies really want to be the king of search engines. There can only be one Plow King.. er, Search King.. er wait, he's already sued google, too.

    It's all just reminiscent of this. [penny-arcade.com]
  • Impudent Amazon Infidels! Google alone is the master of the spanish inqusition, right shall prevail!

  • taxed? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chuck Bucket ( 142633 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:30PM (#7068009) Homepage Journal
    so will internet searches now be taxed if they cross state lines? :)

    CB

  • Thank goodness! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RobertB-DC ( 622190 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:30PM (#7068012) Homepage Journal
    From the article:
    Unlike Google, A9 isn't trying to develop an all-purpose search engine that indexes billions of Web pages. The startup instead is zeroing on a one of search engines' sweet spots -- e-commerce.

    "Sweet spot" for advertisers... "Crap that clutters my search" to me. Google has done a pretty good job of keeping the e-commerce sites out of my listings, and as a result, I really do click on the sponsored links when they're relevant. But they've been slipping... a search on Electric Fencing [google.com] returns mostly people selling the product, but adding keywords (Electric Fencing Installation) helps.

    More articley goodness:
    As more consumers have become comfortable with the Internet, a growing number are using search engines to review products and compare prices.

    Review != Purchase. When I look up a product, I'm usually looking for complaints. Before I signed up for Netflix, I examined the complaints and decided I could live with the reported problems. I decided against GreenCine [greencine.com] in part because subscribers report low supplies despite an excellent selection. You get the idea.

    Hopefully, if Amazon focuses on the e-commerce angle, Google can focus on the information angle. I'll go to Google to find out how to install an electric fence, and perhaps I'll go to Amazon to find an electric fence supplier. But more likely, I'll click on a Google AdWords partner.

    Google's biggest problem right now: Crapflooding, which will continue to be a whack-a-mole problem on any search site. When I do a search on Toothpick Bridge [google.com] for my daughter's science class and see a URL of "www.hdlac.org/mom-daughter-incest.htm", I know that the spammer/scammer community has scored again.
    • This isn't a Google competitor, it's an Overture competitor (think Google AdWords, but only a search of those sites - and listings are ranked by cost, just like adwords).
    • ** I really do click on the sponsored links **

      i don't, but that's just because i barely ever make searches that would end me up in using any money because i don't have any!

      *also they're been mostly irrelevant for me as the localisation to around here is quite new.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:53PM (#7068254)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • My thoughts exactly: searching on amazon can be an exercise in frustration. Even if you specify the title exactly, it returns all matches with those words in any order in alphabetical or most popular order, leaving the user to wade through looking for the exact match. (No, using quotes does not fix the problem.)

        Amazon has an incredibly useful collection of information about books (pretty much the only thing I buy there), but the search capabilities are the weak link. It seems like they're going for the lucr

        • That's a bummer. I was talking a few months ago to a company about doing approximate matching on media titles. This is kind of like exact matching, but with a few errors allowed, eg

          "Lord of the Rings"
          "The Lord of the Rings"

          "Tolkein"
          "J.R. Tolkein"
          "JRR Tolken"

          etc.

          The deal fell through, but it's good to hear there's a need for this type of thing.

        • For instance, I used to go to CDNow.com for all of my music info needs - tracklisting, release dates, etc.

        Why? That's what All Music Guide [allmusic.com] is for. AMG your friend [allmusic.com].

    • Re:Thank goodness! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dmeranda ( 120061 )

      Well, there perhaps is a little more overlap than you may think. Remember some of Google's appendages such as Froogle [google.com] and Google Catalogs [google.com]. Granted however, Google is generally about finding information, and it seems like Amazon is really positioning themselves to find products/vendors.

      But serious competition may be good, even if its not directly the same market. Things like this help keep great companies like Google working hard. As long as it is competition. I really don't want non-competitive devi

      • I really don't want non-competitive devices such as patents or other legalease destructiveness to be raised.

        The folks who patented one-click ordering may not turn out to be such principled defenders of competition.

      • " But wouldn't it be great to be able to find books based upon some text in the book? But given the sad state of copyright law, that will probably remain science fiction."

        Couldn't this be done with something like Project Gutenberg? In fact, couldn't this be done with any copywrited text that has gone into public domain?

    • Not my experience (Score:3, Insightful)

      by harmonica ( 29841 )
      Google has done a pretty good job of keeping the e-commerce sites out of my listings,

      Recently, I don't think that's true anymore. At least from my experience. If you search for anything remotely similar to a product or service, you may run into special spam link farms for the search terms you looked for in the top ten of the Google results. Sure, you can report these with the 'Dissatisfied?' link at the bottom, but that's tedious, probably not too many people use that, because it doesn't seem to improve t
    • "The startup instead is zeroing on a one of search engines' sweet spots -- e-commerce"

      Amazon already bought an e-commerce search company for over $100 Million. [com.com]

      Feels like a dup from '98. :-)

      • Amazon already bought an e-commerce search company for over $100 Million [com.com].

        And boy, were they excited:

        "PlanetAll is the most innovative use of the Internet I've seen," said Amazon's founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. "It's simply a breakthrough in doing something as fundamental and important as staying in touch."

        "This is a significant opportunity for all of us at Junglee to extend our technology well beyond our current base," said Ram Shriram, president and COO of Junglee. "With Amazon.com, we can address the
    • I was just about to start on a rant about how paid listing sites have ruined Google for all geek hardware searches, and how this A9 will surely be the same thing, when I discovered upon testing an example (thank heavens for testing!) that the problem seems to have _gone_away_now_.

      I'm talking about the situation where you search for, say, "Canon S400" and all you get is a load of duplicated hits from paid listing sites like DealTime, DealsOnTheWeb, Kelkoo and so on (all claiming, ironically enough, to show

  • I wanted to get first post... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aliencow ( 653119 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:30PM (#7068020) Homepage Journal
    But I kept wondering if clicking "reply" and "submit" would infringe on Amazon's patents... but I realized that it meant two clicks, not one!

  • Why it won't work: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) * on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:32PM (#7068042) Homepage
    Do we really trust an amazon sponsored search engine when looking for "books on computers"? Do we really believe that they will give us unskewed results?

    This is the core of the matter, and why google is so successful. We believe that they are unbiased, and therefore trust their results.

    Incidently, this is why msn search will fail as well.

    All hail the king of searches: Google.

    • Re:Why it won't work: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dublin ( 31215 )
      Do we really trust an amazon sponsored search engine when looking for "books on computers"? Do we really believe that they will give us unskewed results?

      Why not? Your proposition doesn't even make sense. In fact, Amazon has shown that they are quite willing to give honest results, even when doing so may result in them losing the sale themselves. (Although they do still get a small cut of these other sales.)

      Example:

      1) Amazon lists used books on the same page as thier new ones.
      2) I was looking for a

  • Well, are you, punk? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quill ( 238781 ) <martin.simaltech@com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:33PM (#7068049) Homepage
    It's a good thing Google already has a "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. A9 would surely patent One-Click Searching.

  • Conflict of interest? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Takara ( 711260 )
    Amazon wants to be google, but ...A9 isn't trying to develop an all-purpose search engine that indexes billions of Web pages. The startup instead is zeroing on a one of search engines' sweet spots -- e-commerce. Will Amazon give priority to Amazon pages/products when consumers search A9 for items?
  • I remember reading about Amazon using cookies to raise the prices for returning customers. How do we know they won't monitor searches, and use it to put up prices for things that you might be interested in?
    Case in point: I was buying a ticket for a flight, and when I started, there were lots of available seats on a variety of days at 317 each way. By the time I had gone through the process, put in my credit card details to buy it, and hit submit, a message appeared saying "The seating information has changed, please start from the beginning again." Magically, all the seats on all the same days had jumped to 900 each way. My point? I don't know. But Amazon has played dirty before. And I don't trust them.

    Anyway, I didn't book my tickets with British Airways. Some other mug will have to pay the inflated prices.

    • we pretty much know that it would be exactly what they would do, only call it personalised searches that result in relevant results.

      though, a real sneaky way would be that for a start it would return really excellent results and then later start mixing in sponsored links..

      of course, i'm just talking out of my ass here, but the main point is that those who choose what search engine they use wouldn't easily trust amazon to play fair and square on this and thus wouldn't use it, those that just use the one th

    • Didn't happen. (Score:5, Informative)

      by MushMouth ( 5650 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:59PM (#7068308)
      No, they didn't do that, they randomly chose prices for some items a while ago.(it was like a multiple choice, you could get price A, B, or C) the cookies, just made sure that once you got A, you still got A, they were testing the market. After it all blew through they charged everyone the lowest price for the item.
    • That probably wasn't Amazon. Airlines have rather unique computerized pricing systems that tend to frequently (up to 20 times a day for a given ticket!) adjust prices.

      That price jump is insane, but not surprising. They probably had a hockey team or other large party order tickets. Their automated system would immediatly put in for a price change which attempts to have ~2 empty seats approx 5 minutes prior to takeoff in first class.

      Google search on Airline Ticket Pricing [google.com]
      • Well, it's not a very common flight route, and I just find it amazing that in the 5 minutes that I was completing the transaction for a flight about 3 months in advance, all the flights that I would have been able to take (+/- 7 days, due to fairly flexible travelling times) suddenly filled up, but yet had first class spaces?

        5 different flights within 2 weeks, all at 317. Suddenly, just after I plugged in my credit card details, and address, etc, they all shoot up to 900. I just don't believe it. And I to

  • But (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:34PM (#7068062)
    They keep telling me large parts of the Amazon are unexplored. How will they find anything?
  • I'm all for competition and I don't have any problem with M$ trying to usurp Google(good luck you M$ twits) but, Amazon is starting to tick me off. Perhaps it is their monthly patent filings that rub me the wrong way. Deep down I fear that they will beat Google by patenting the "Search" button.

  • Remember when... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:39PM (#7068116)
    yahoo, excite and hotbot were called search engines?
    And Amazon sold books, and did it well?

    Then somebody said "Portals" and they became "portals".
    Then somebody said "Auction" and they all followed e-bay.
    Then somebody said "e-commerce" and they all started selling everything.

    And books became Amazon's sideline to their patents on everything but the color of money.
    And their site became a Navigational Nightmare(TM) (patent pending).

    Now everybody wants to be a search engine again.

    The reason Google is succesful is because it does it gives people the information they want, and stays the hell out of their way.

    • RE: Absolutely! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:51PM (#7069005) Journal
      All of the post dot-com survivors still seem to be fixated on the same, flawed concept that got most of the web sites in trouble to begin with. It's *not* about doing anything and everything to maximize your "eyeballs" viewing your site.

      It's *really* about focusing intensely on one particular service or offering that a decent-sized group of users think is useful.

      If you're going to sell books, be the biggest, best-priced and most convenient bookseller on the net - but DON'T try to be a patent-monger, or an auction mega-site, or a toy store, or anything else unrelated!

      As you said, Google is so highly regarded because it was always designed, from day one, to be a search engine - and to do the best possible job of indexing pages. They've added a lot of features - but they're all related to their core functionality (such as the ability to calculate math equations that are entered in the search field, or the ability to do phone number lookups). You use their site when you seek answers to something, and it tries to provide those answers (whether by directly giving you results, or pointing you to sites that have the information you seek).

      eBay has, in my opinion, also been the only truly successful online auction site because they've kept their focus on that one area without straying. Everyone who wants to "be the next eBay" or your "eBay alternative" (aka. Yahoo auctions) can't quite penetrate that market, because they've all tried it as a side offering. Folks think "Hmm... Why use this auction link off this e-commerce or search engine site, when I can use eBay, that's completely dedicated to auctions? More people will see my listings that way, and there's likely to be more of the stuff I'm looking to buy."
    • Funny, I don't EVER remember Amazon selling books well. Agressively yes, but they pissed off more customers than they won in the first two years.

  • [OT] Did anyone notice the picture? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/TECH/internet/09/26/goog le.amazon.ap/story.search.jpg

    Look closely at the OS. WHY did they use Windows 3.1?!?!?

    --bhtooefr
  • Has anyone noticed the increasingly uninformative results Google has been returning lately?

    Searching for almost any generic term on Google results in a deluge of shopping sites. And (surprise, surprise) Amazon finds its way to the top of the lists nearly everytime.

    I wouldn't be surprised that since every page on Amazon prominently features a Google search field that the folks at Google have conveniently avoided trying to find a way to fairly balance its search results.

    Needless to say, Google is becoming
    • The more quality links you have the better your PageRank the higher up in the results.

      If you search for the number of sites that link to google it's ~39,000. I have a feeling a few of those have a page rank above 7, that is going to put them at the top for a lot of searches.

  • So they sell books... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jin Wicked ( 317953 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:41PM (#7068134) Homepage Journal
    ...and other stuff through different stores, and now they want to be a search engine, too? I don't really get why these sites feel the need to be everything to everyone -- it seems to me to be a recipe for failure. Plus I don't think I'd trust a search engine that was directly connected with profiting from promoting certain brands, products, etc. I haven't used anything but Google in a long time. I've even heard journalists and a (US) government official use the expression "Googling" in interviews/press releases on NPR on numerous occassions. Google is practically ubiquitous with searching now. If I was an Amazon.com shareholder I would be very wary of this.

    Not to say that a better search engine won't eventually come along, but I don't see why anyone is going to switch when the incumbent site is about as good as most people will need.

    Excuse me, I have to go Amazon... er... A9... for more information, now...

    Nope, sorry. Doesn't work. ^^;

    • It's the problem with being a public corporation. The investors demand exponential growth, forever. This means that management feels pressured to keep doing new things, or try to squeeze blood from a stone. The problem is, they go beyond their domain of competence and soon hose everything.

  • Natural Biases (Score:2, Interesting)

    by silverHat ( 708410 )
    Maybe it's just me, but I'm pretty sure that I will not be able to count on Amazon to give me back non-biased results whenever I'll do a search. Being a -company- where profit is far more important than anything else, will they try to capitalize on it buy throwing in it's own products before someone else's?

    It's probably legal, since it's Amazon's search engine, but if I'm looking for a new blender or whatever, I can bet a million to one the first couple ( if not more ) links will be geared toward amazon.c
  • I guess it only make sense to build a decent front end to the alexa archive, they claim it's huge [alexa.com].

  • typosquatters set scrambling... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by outsider007 ( 115534 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:45PM (#7068172)
    as everyone tries to get a1.com - a8.com,
  • So Amazon will sell advertising space on this search engine, that's the whole point of the search engine. But what concerns me is if they will have negative reviews/information regarding placement that advertisers have paid for.

    I know if I was paying for ad space on A9 and found a scathing review showing up right under the link to my product, I would be very pissed at Amazon and want them to take it off, because, hey, I'm paying for it. There is none of this with google...well.....except the whole Scien

  • Amazon/Alexa has a good spider/crawler.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ron_ivi ( 607351 ) <sdotno@@@cheapcomplexdevices...com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:53PM (#7068261)
    Alexa, the guys who are behind Archive.org, one of the biggest internet archives [archive.org], is an amazon company.

    I've noticed more activity from their spider (useragent ia_archiver) than I have from google on my domains recently; so I tend to believe they have a more up-to-date and possibly larger index.

  • Patents (Score:4, Funny)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Friday September 26, 2003 @05:54PM (#7068262) Homepage
    Just wait for them to pantent one click searching..

    Rus
  • and they'll also try to patent 1-Click searching.

  • Froogle? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Adam9 ( 93947 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:01PM (#7068317) Journal
    What about Froogle [google.com]?

    Taken from this [google.com] page:

    Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google's search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.

    I've only tried it a few times awhile back, and it seems to work pretty well. Will this compete with A9?
  • Patent this idea! Fast!

  • not all cheesies and gum (Score:4, Interesting)

    by poptones ( 653660 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:02PM (#7068323) Journal
    I admit google is my first pick as well, but don't dismiss ANY latecomers at this point. It's not just the spoofers and spammers who have weasled their way in - I've done many searches where the first several pages were basically useless ecommerce sites and even done searches where no useful information could be found there at all. Google is a great search engine, but it's nothing near the greatness it had as little as a year ago. Give it another year or two and someone is sure to come up with something better - even if it's google itself that is finally forced to do it.

  • This is futile (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ignorant Aardvark ( 632408 ) <cydeweys AT gmail DOT com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:06PM (#7068347) Homepage Journal
    You can't overtake Google at this point. It's too late. Google has been the undisputed king of search for over two years now, and it's simply too "big" to be overtaken by Microsoft's or Amazon's attempts. The only thing that Google could possibly do to screw up their huge lead in marketshare is to do something incredibly stupid - much like what we need Microsoft to do before it loses the majority of the market (and, let's face it, DRM for Microsoft just might be the thing that kills it).

    • Re:This is futile (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:45PM (#7068621) Homepage

      I think that Google could be beaten, but not by Amazon or Microsoft. The problem is that a search engine has to be perceived as neutral.

      A little guy with much better technology could make headway.

      Also, the likelihood of Google screwing up will increase greatly once they go public. Investors will demand more return, and management might eventually do something that blows the company reputation.

    • Re:This is futile (Score:3, Insightful)

      by malibucreek ( 253318 )
      "You can't overtake Netscape at this point. It's too late. Netscape has been the undisputed king of browsers for over two years now, and it's simply too 'big' to be overtaken by Microsoft's or Amazon's attempts. The only thing that Netscape could possibly do to screw up their huge lead in marketshare is to do something incredibly stupid - much like what we need Microsoft to do before it loses the majority of the market (and, let's face it, DRM for Microsoft just might be the thing that kills it)."
    • Don't be so sure. After all, most people wouldn't have believed that behemoths like Yahoo, AltaVista, HotBot, and Inktomi could have been made almost irrelevant by an upstart nobody had ever heard of (Google).

      I tend to agree that Google's current position is very strong, but to judge Amazon's attempt as futile is premature at best. At worst, it's shortsighted and ignore the lessons that history provides us. ;)

  • Will Google even need to adapt? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by azpenguin ( 589022 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:07PM (#7068350)
    Google is already a part of the nation's everyday vocabulary. We "google" things when we want to find them. Almost every time internet searching is alluded to in a news story, you'll see "use a search engine, such as Google.com" soon after.
    No business is bulletproof, but Google right now is one of the strongest internet names. People like Google because there's only as much whiz-bang as you need, and it's as effective as internet searching as been for the last few years. The main page weighs in, IIRC, at under 13K of bandwidth. Far quicker and less obtrusive than MSN or Amazon. Even on a dial-up connection it's almost instantaneous. You don't get any pop-ups on Google, and for those poor souls unfortunate enough to still use IE, Google even offers a tool that will stop pop-ups. The tools that they offer are useful and unobtrusive. They don't take over or alter your sysem, such as pretty much anything from Microsoft. (And I doubt Google DRM Software is going to be among next year's offered downloads. Unlike Windows Media Player...)
    And Google has street smarts that you can't get from any boardroom. For example, news.google.com was a weekend project that a couple of employees threw together. And it got a lot of competitors' attention when they saw just how good a job they did. They're always adapting. I've seen many quotes from discussions long past show up again on message boards, and they're pulled from the Google Groups services.
    While Google may not be a utopia, it's got what it needs to stand up to the MS and Amazon assault. A strong base, a smart and adaptable workforce, and great public recognition. The market is adapting to Google, not the other way around. Considering they don't like to sit on their past achievements too much, I think they'll hold up fine.

  • The problem here is that when people search the net for "Britney Spears", they're not looking to buy her CDs - but that's will be what they get with Amahoo!!!

  • Hmmm.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by adeyadey ( 678765 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:11PM (#7068379) Journal
    I will wait and see. If you *have* to have a dominant search engine, Google is not such a bad one to have, the adverts (sponsered links) are intelligently placed, and not too intrusive. God, just think we could have Micro$oft as the #1 search engine.. Shudder..

    So, I, for one, welcome Google, our current search-engine overlords..
  • It's like the story about the frog and the scorpion. Microsoft can't compete with Google because they just can't allow themselves to give honest results on searches including words like "Linux". This renders their search engine useless, since there is an alternative (Google) that gives honest results. Same with Amazon. It's against their nature. They just can't resist the temptation to give results in favor of the highest bidder, even if it means they can compete with Google.
  • I think at this point, Google's feeble attempts at e-commerce search are really not convincing enough to scare anybody (and particularly not Amazon) away from trying something along these lines.

    I mean, realistically, Froogle.com aside, Google can really search very simple static content. Put a CGI form on your website and Google will stop there. Put anything on your website that ties into a complex request and Google won't touch it.

    Therefore, I don't think that the spin "A9 is going to compete with Goog

  • What Amazon's doing with A9 is pretty obvious - they'll let Google invest in the overhead to index billions of pages that have little to no commercial potential, in the quest to produce "complete" listings.

    In the meantime, A9 will index a fraction of that content, focused tightly on e-commerce that will have huge revenue potential, and skim the cream from the search paradigm.

    Sorta like doctors who specialize in "diseases of the rich". :-)
  • http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/TECH/internet/09/26/goog le.amazon.ap/story.search.jpg A bit offtopic but check out that image.. Isn't that a windows 3.11 running on a blower 15" monitor from back in the days? cnn should update its art a bit to a 19" tft running KDE 3.2 alpha (ok maybe emacs IS better but...)
  • This will mean twice as much work for KaZaA, Church of Scientology, et. al. Now they'll have to send twice as many take down notices over things they don't like.

  • RTFA (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kallahar ( 227430 ) <kallahar@quickwired.com> on Friday September 26, 2003 @06:30PM (#7068510) Homepage
    Amazon is not looking to compete with *google* they're looking to compete with *froogle*, google's product search engine. In both A9 and Froogle, companies can set up data feeds that update the product/price database.

    Amazon is *not* trying to index the web.
    • I think it's important to notice the respectible restraint that google showed in the interview. They could've pimped out froogle while it's still in beta, but instead they let Amazon get their limelight for a moment.

      But the thing is, once Froogle goes live and is advertised in a big way, expect this A9 stuff to be pushed under the rug...
  • But the sould still burns.

  • With A9 they seems to be more competing with Audi thant with Google :)

  • froogle.google.com?? (Score:2, Informative)

    by phallstrom ( 69697 )
    "The startup instead is zeroing on a one of search engines' sweet spots -- e-commerce.

    As more consumers have become comfortable with the Internet, a growing number are using search engines to review products and compare prices."

    Why not just use froogle.google.com? It's excellent for comparing prices if you know the model of what you're looking for.
  • Froogle.google.com [google.com] already does this and has been working for well over a year. Once again Google is ahead of the curve.

  • Search + Personalization? (Score:4, Funny)

    by slagdogg ( 549983 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:04PM (#7068727)
    Sounds like fun -- I mean, Amazon holds the crown in recommendations ... I can see the features now:

    "Customers who searched for 'Asian Porn' also searched for: Azn N0rp, Hot Asian Sluts, Azn Porn"

    "When searching for 'Barnes and Nobles': Did you mean: Amazon.com?"

    I think they're a little late for the "one click searching" patent, however.

  • They already have something of this sort (Score:4, Interesting)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 ) on Friday September 26, 2003 @07:04PM (#7068730) Homepage Journal

    The other day I searched Amzazon's website for the PC Infrared (IrDa) adapter and they showed a section called "Sponsored Links" on their website.

    Here are the details of Amazon's Sponsored Links [amazon.com]

    Copy and paste of the text:

    SPONSORED LINKS

    Sponsored Links are advertisements that Amazon.com provides to you. We receive Sponsored Links from Google's AdWords service. When you click on a Sponsored Link, we get revenue. The selection of Sponsored Links that are displayed is based on keywords. For example, if you search for "Bruce Springsteen" or view pages about Bruce Springsteen, the Sponsored Links may point to sites that sell tickets to his concerts or provide information about him. Sponsored Links are always clearly labeled.

    Generating additional revenue from Sponsored Links allows us to offer lower prices to you--something we are dedicated to doing every way we can.
  • Personally, I have to wonder if Amazon is playing a shell game to snooker investors. Here's how it would work, Mr. Bezos determines that his current business can never make a profit. How will he ever explain that to the investors (and let him offload some shares?) As long as he takes whatever income he has and invests it into expanding his business into new areas, investors are not bothered by losses. Given that their earnings/share is still negative $.23, I would guess that's their game.

    Alternately, they
  • A9, or 37x52mm as it's also known.

    Darl McBride to start a search engine called Foolscap.
  • Google seems to be turning up lots of mailing lists in the search results nowadays.

    For web search I'd rather more the formalized documents to be ranked higher (FAQs HOWTOs etc). If I wanted email/other messages I'd rather use Google Groups for that.

    Maybe they hadn't rebuilt their index yet in the past few weeks?

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