Ari Paparo Dot Com: A9 Changes the World

What do you get when you mix Google and Amazon? Not what I expected, that's for sure.

A9.com beta-launched today and its the first "wow" search product I've seen in a couple of years. Since the news of A9 leaked months ago press reports focused on the "Inside the Book" search and the potential for integration between commerce and search. But these features turned out to be a sideshow to the real benefits -- the use of Amazon's transparent and passive construction of individual user profiles. After logging in to A9 with your Amazon ID (privacy advocates can freak out at this point) the system captures every search you conduct into a profile, which is then available for you to view or repeat as needed. Especially cool, A9 actually remembered my recent Amazon searches ("Canon S30") and helpfully offered them within my A9 profile. As I conducted more searches I built up a portfolio of searches that I can repeat over time.

The A9 toolbar (IE only) expands the personalization approach by allowing annotation of websites, as well as tie-ins with IMDB and other Amazon databases (Alexa). This could finally be the bookmark-killer the world's been waiting for, allowing annotation and limited portability. We'll see about that one.

I think the press is going to spend a lot of time talking about "Inside the Book" and that's a big mistake. Book search is a niche application for a limited number of search topics. The search results are not particularly useful, and require the user to take additional steps (such as buying the book!) to get the data needed. If you look at the top search topics -- porn, celebrities, travel, sports -- none are particularly well-suited to book search.

The really interesting question now is whether A9 will prompt Google to add all these advanced personalization features themselves or will leave the technically complex and daunting challenge of building a personalization agent to their partner, Amazon.

I'm giving A9 another week of testing, then I'm changing my browser homepage. Yes, it's that good.

April 19, 2004 10:39 PM

What do you get when you mix Google and Amazon? Not what I expected, that's for sure. A9.com beta-launched today and its the first "wow" search product I've seen in a couple of years. Since the news of A9 leaked months ago press reports focused on the "Inside the Book" search and the potential for integration between commerce and search. But these features turned out to be a sideshow to the real benefits -- the use of Amazon's transparent and passive construction of individual user profiles. After logging in to A9 with your Amazon ID (privacy advocates can freak out at this point) the system captures every search you conduct into a profile, which is then available for you to view or repeat as needed. Especially cool, A9 actually remembered my recent Amazon searches ("Canon S30") and helpfully offered them within my A9 profile. As I conducted more searches I built up a portfolio of searches that I can repeat over time. The A9 toolbar (IE only) expands the personalization approach by allowing annotation of websites, as well as tie-ins with IMDB and other Amazon databases (Alexa). This could finally be the bookmark-killer the world's been waiting for, allowing annotation and limited portability. We'll see about that one. I think the press is going to spend a lot of time talking about "Inside the Book" and that's a big mistake. Book search is a niche application for a limited number of search topics. The search results are not particularly useful, and require the user to take additional steps (such as buying the book!) to get the data needed. If you look at the top search topics -- porn, celebrities, travel, sports -- none are particularly well-suited to book search. The really interesting question now is whether A9 will prompt Google to add all these advanced personalization features themselves or will leave the technically complex and daunting challenge of building a personalization agent to their partner, Amazon. I'm giving A9 another week of testing, then I'm changing my browser homepage. Yes, it's that good.