September 19, 2004

The A9 Search Engine

Posted at 22:14 | | 6 Comments | View blog reactions

I have just discovered the A9 search engine via Cyril. Do you know it and do you like it ?

Loic,

I used it for a while, but stoped, as i was not very confortable with the thought of having all my search stored and remembered by the A9 server, and having my area of interested tracked...

Nice, simple UI, but not an order of magniture better than google to justify the switch for me.

Marc.

Marc Goldberg, September 19, 2004 at 22:56

I wrote about it some time back when they went live and when I thought about it then I called it a research engine, and that's what it is. Google is a simple search engine, where the paid placements often are good results too.

But A9 is starting to become my favorite really. I love simple clicking a box and searching within books to find out more. Or going back to the search term from yesterday that I used to find out more about project-based enterprise. There's lots of stuff like this. It is starting to become my favorite search engine. And hey, it's based on the Google results. I don't have to worry there.

As for privacy issues. Amazon knows so much about me, this little bit more won't do a difference. And due to my GMail login, and AdSense and AdWords accounts, Google is probably giving all my cookies all the IDs they can dream about to track my surfing and through AdSense they can even track my browsing.

My privacy is going down the drain anyway. Hell, I blog, what do I care.

Oliver Thylmann, September 20, 2004 at 07:57

All search engines are tracking searches one way or another (heard about the Google cookie ?), so A9 with its search history is not doing much worse. And their simultaneous book search is pretty useful.

Furthermore, per John Battelle, it sounds as though one is getting discounts on Amazon.com for using it, so...

Jeff Clavier, September 20, 2004 at 08:13

I kind of like it but what bothers me is that it seems it is using Google as the underlying technology. Although google is great, I think it is dangereous on the long run if everyone rely on the same search engine.

Mathieu Nouzareth, September 20, 2004 at 10:04

I wrote about it, too. As far as I can recall, the first version went online in the 6th Month of 2004. It is improving, no doubt about this. But in the meanwhile I am going to prefer Google for the interface is a bit cluttered for my taste.

I can only agree with Methieu about the Google/A9 relationship. Delivering their own result set could work wonders. Compare it to the Yahoo/Google relationship if you want.

Regarding privacy: As long as they don't force me to sign up I think it is fair for both parties (e.g.: Advanced Features for registered users, Others have the basic 'Command Set' available.)

Mario, September 20, 2004 at 16:49

A9 update
"Amazon's search engine, A9, has new look and features."
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum16/1516.htm

A9 is very Web 2.0...I like it and I should test it...

Dimitar Vesselinov, September 21, 2004 at 16:22

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