14 Apr 2004 | JP said...

I'm not too crazy about it. The side-by-side panes and search history are nice, I suppose, but how often do you really need to Search Inside the Book? The Alexa tie-in is nice, but I doubt I would really use it that often, and I'd rather not go through Amazon to find out more about a site.

Has no developer created a similar service using Google's API? I've often thought about using the service to create paned search results from GoogleI would choose panes for Google Groups and Directory searches, though.

Finally, I hate, hate, hate it when a search engine tracks my clickthroughs to other sites. If I sign-in to use A9, they'll know the sites I visit and the products I buy (through A9/Amazon, at least). Jeff Bezos = Big Brother?

14 Apr 2004 | Zac said...

I've only had about 3 minutes to test it out, but so far I agree with JP's comments.

As for what I do like:

I like the "recent searches" feature. I can access my recent Google searches in my browser's history, but it's not nearly as convenient.

The URL shortcut feature is especially nice. Typing a9/searchterm (leaving off the .com) works in most browsers, and seems quicker to me than tabbing to Safari's "search Google" field. (A good reason for them to have picked a simple, two-character domain name)

14 Apr 2004 | Mark Fusco said...

Seems like the next logical step for them. Alexa is a Amazon / Google venture, of course, and A9 is powered by Google.

I don't think it's Jeff Bezos = big brother, but rather perhaps part of the big Google scheme.

14 Apr 2004 | alan taylor said...

It appears they have an option for those who hate, hate, hate it when they get tracked - generic.a9.com. The toolbar looks a bit intrusive to me - not only tracks your browsing history, but has a 'diary' option to let you comment on a web page. Your history and diary are then accessible over the web, without the toolbar, just by logging into amazon/a9. That's a lot of info to share.

14 Apr 2004 | Paul said...

I initially like the visual look a little more than Google. It's got the 'stripped down' thing happening, but with actual color. The resizable tabs don't work in my browser (NS7 on OS 9), so I'll reserve judgment on those. Don't like that I can't change the number of results per page - in fact, I hate that. Resizing the tabs/divs is an interesting feature.

JP: If I sign-in to use A9, they'll know the sites I visit and the products I buy (through A9/Amazon, at least).

That's a really interesting aspect of it. The next time I pop into Amazon, "The Page You Made" might have items related to recent searches....

Has anyone tried the toolbar?

14 Apr 2004 | Robb Beal said...

I like the strong vertical orientation. Reminds me of the Shrook 2 UI.

14 Apr 2004 | alan taylor said...

I tried the toolbar, nothing hugely different than you'd expect, except the diary thing I mentioned above. The worst part was when I uninstalled it (via a dropdown command in the toolbar), it rebooted my machine without prompting - lost some work on that one, sigh.

14 Apr 2004 | Dave S. said...

Why doesn't my browser's back button work once I get into the results pages?

14 Apr 2004 | Dave S. said...

my bad, seems to only be happening in my mozilla 1.4.... I'll be heading on over to moz headquarters right now to update.

14 Apr 2004 | blakems said...

I like it. Nice design and an excellent tool in research. the collapsable side by side search is great.

14 Apr 2004 | RS said...

Jeff Bezos = Big Brother?

I actually like the idea that Amazon could know what I search for and what I buy. That fact would determine when I use A9 and when I use good ol' Google.

I might use A9 when I'm searching for things related to my core interests -- like the web, philosophy, certain sciences, etc. I search more often than I buy books, so Amazon's recommendations for me could be more informed.

Google is there for everything else.. like looking up web addresses when I only remember site names, learning about products, getting the Straight Dope on camel spiders, etc.

14 Apr 2004 | Paul said...

Haven't had much time to play around with it....but first impression: why such a large search box? It stretches with the width of the page, but at 1024x768 it's unnecessarily huge, and funny looking too.

14 Apr 2004 | JF said...

Seems a lot of people think search engines are all or nothing. What's wrong with using different engines for different jobs? I agree with RS.

15 Apr 2004 | Seun Osewa said...

I like the look of the A9 page, but I don't like having two toolbars! I see Amazon's A9 as merely something that will give google or yahoo a couple of good ideas. Btw can't some o the information be stored on the user-side?

15 Apr 2004 | james said...

I've always liked being able to search from the address bar in Konqueror, by typing "gg: query items", or any shortcut I have set up. Glad to see A9 doing something just as easy. This doesn't really set it apart, but rather just assures that it's staying with the pack. I don't care if everybody offers the same solutions to usability problems, as long as their the right ones. And when all this technology works, works well, and works together, perhaps we can get back really living.

I'm on the side of the folks who'd rather not have their every online move tracked. Furthermore, I don't buy everything through Amazon. For books, at least, I use isbn.nu, which compares all the major online resellers. It has as easy url scheme to boot: http://isbn.nu/073571410X.

15 Apr 2004 | Mike Jayx said...

Well What can I say!! Amazon wil take over the world

15 Apr 2004 | Ben said...

I, for one, welcome our new Seattle overlords.

15 Apr 2004 | pb said...

The colors and text size make it a non-starter for me.

WRT Shrook, why does it waste so much space with the left-most column? That should be a drop-down like FeedDemon.

Hopefully a9 is at least a training ground for Amazon to improve it's horrible, horrible search.

15 Apr 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

The feature that caught my eye is Alexa. Is this new or has it been around for a while? It's an interesting way to get info about a site.

Alexa lists the site's "average traffic rank," but they don't explain what that means. For example, my site's Average Traffic Rank is 1,800,770. Does that mean that there are 1,800,769 sites in Alexa's database that get more traffic than mine (which wouldn't surprise me), or does it mean something else?

15 Apr 2004 | Mark Fusco said...

Brad -

Alexa's been around a while. Their traffic ranking info is a bit difficult to comprehend (for me at least), but I think it boils down to this -

According to Alexa, your site - with a ranking of 1,800,770 - gets 1 visit for every 1,800,770 visits to Yahoo - which is ranked number 1.

Of course, this number changes all the time - I think they update their rankings twice a week (Weds & Sun from what I've noticed) and is based only on the visits to your site of those individuals who have the Alexa toolbar installed, or the functionality turned on in the newer versions of IE.

16 Apr 2004 | Anthony Baker said...

I like this a lot. I'd had a thought years ago that Amazon should become more of a Yahoo -- that is, you do a search on a book and could find pointers to sites related to the topic, or find sites that people interested in this book recommended. This seems to kind of be like this in a way -- here's books for your terms.

I'm also a pretty avid reader, so finding books on subjects I'm interested in is worth while. And hell, while I may never buy anything out of this, it's nice to be able to browse the isles, as it were.

I do wonder a bit about having my searches tagged to my user profile, however -- particularly given that the profile at Amazon has my name, address, credit card info, etc. Very, very specific to me.

Anyone have any idea about the terms of service agreement for this? Will Amazon share their more specific user data with Google?