Amazon.com Enters Hot Online-Search Market
A secretive subsidiary of Amazon.com Inc. introduced an Internet search engine Wednesday, highlighting the growing urgency among the Internet’s biggest players to control the online search market before Google Inc. runs away with it.
The search engine from 6-month-old A9.com Inc. builds on technology licensed from Google but adds features pulled from Amazon’s bag of tricks, such as letting users post reviews of websites and suggesting others they might like. Amazon had previously revealed almost nothing about A9 or its operations.
The unveiling of the test version of A9 shows how important the search business is for Internet companies. Analysts said it spoke volumes that even Amazon had been spending as much time thinking about search strategy as grocery stores spend thinking about where to put candy racks to generate the most impulse buys.
“It’s become quite apparent in a very short period of time that search is the hot spot of the Web today,” said Kenneth Cassar, director of strategic analysis for Nielsen/NetRatings. “Everyone wants to be like Google.”
Although Amazon is based in Seattle, the company set up A9 in Palo Alto, Calif., creating speculation that it was gunning for Silicon Valley darlings Google and Yahoo Inc. But Amazon’s use of Google’s technology also raises questions about whether the two companies are cooperating or competing.
The A9 operation is headed by former Yahoo technologist Udi Manber. The plan is to use A9’s search technology on its own site and license it to other Web operators, which Amazon wouldn’t name.
The search engine “is part of Amazon’s evolution from being an online retailer or bookstore to being a technology services company,” said Alison Diboll, an A9 spokeswoman.
As the Internet matures, big players such as Yahoo, Google and Microsoft Corp. have invested heavily in better search technologies so that they can capture users’ attention -- and dollars -- when they want to find something online. At the same time, Amazon has grown into more than just an online store.
“People underestimate Amazon as an innovator of technology,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with American Technology Research. “Amazon wants to be not only a direct retailer but a platform or marketplace. Search is key to that.”
A9 searches not only the Internet but also pages of books that Amazon has scanned as part of the Search Inside the Book feature on the parent company’s site. Users can also search Amazon’s Internet Movie Database, keep histories of previous searches and, via a downloadable toolbar, take notes on sites that they can retrieve later.
To get most of the benefits, A9 users must sign in with their Amazon account name and password. And the potential to link search requests with online shopping patterns may make some privacy advocates nervous. Spokeswoman Diboll said tracking features were being used only to improve results but wouldn’t comment on future plans.
John Battelle, a former magazine publisher who is writing a book on Internet search, noted that A9’s extra features could persuade some users to switch from Google’s search engine.
“Amazon has taken the best of Google and made it, to my mind, a lot better,” Battelle wrote on his Searchblog website, which was the first to report A9’s release. “If A9 is as good as it seems to be,” he said, a customer who uses it is likely to spend less time on Google and become “a deeper and far more loyal Amazon customer.... In essence, Amazon seems to be making a play for Google’s customers. “
Yet people who have put A9 through its paces pointed out that the search engine seemed to censor some of its results, which could limit its ability to challenge Google and Yahoo for general-interest Internet searches.
A search for “nude celebrities,” for example, returned only sites with people wearing clothes. But there also was a link to the book “Total Exposure: The Movie Buff’s Guide to Celebrity Nude Scenes,” which can be purchased at Amazon.com.
Amazon shares gained 21 cents, to $46.79, on Nasdaq.
