Amazon Exits A9

As reported by SearchEngineWatch and Battelle’s Searchblog, Amazon has effectively shut the doors on A9.com. It’s a shame, as this was one of the more exciting entries out there, and although not widely used, it coulda been a contender! Should the features that A9.com had be usurped by another engine or will Amazon sell the parts, as they’ve pretty much thrown in the towel?

Let’s take a look at what’s gone, and possibly lost forever.

First, A9.com’s search history feature was important and useful. As stated by Monica Soto Ouchi, a Seattle Times reporter, “The search engine with memory has lost its recollection.” Anything you ever searched for was waiting for you to find again. I always thought these search trails would be interesting to study (as Google does study your habits) and maybe even more interesting to share. What if someone had already found what you wanted… wouldn’t it be nice to give them the search strategy to get there? Maybe a little web 2.0 of me, but it might have had some legs.

Also gone? BlockView, a potential breakthrough in local search. A9 took a very cool sneakerware approach to the local business problem. They’d armed college kids with trucks with 360 degree cameras, and used global positioning system units to capture street-level images of businesses in more than a dozen U.S. cities. So when users searched for a local business, it enabled them to see what the business – and surrounding area – looked like. If local search is about maps… this was a great approach. This is hopefully something that would be resurrected.

A9 also discontinued its toolbar, maps, yellow pages, diary and bookmarks, though none of these were particularly noteworthy or different from what’s out there.

One of the things that stays is the ability for the user to create a custom “search group”. This entailed finding a site or blog feed that interested you and letting the A9.com access and search it for you. So if you find yourself continually searching for things in a particular vertical, you can have a custom search tab at the ready. Pretty neat – I use it all the time.

So when did it all go wrong for A9.com? Possibly from the start. First, they located themselves away from Amazon’s headquarters and tried to be a Silicon Valley shop. While safely away from the core business, they probably minimalized the amount of interplay they had with the intellectual and engineering capital in Seattle… this probably hurt. But most feel that the deathknell for A9 came this February when Udi Manber (it’s CEO and lead search guru) went to Google. And in April Amazon signed a deal with Microsoft Windows Live to power its Web and news searches. This signaled the end of their investment in the search business.

So where did they end up? Well they built a good metasearch engine with very little market penetration. At last count, they ranked 83rd in the search world. And their search features? Well BlockView might be saved. Windows Live Local recently debuted similar similiar stuff, but only for Seattle and San Fran. More cities to come, I’m sure.

So let’s assume A9.com’s parts are on the block? Who’d buy em? Love to hear your thoughts on this, but I’d bet Infospace or Microsoft would take them and run with them. And don’t discount one of the smaller entrants, as 83rd is a big number in terms of traffic, and a little entrant might find that a good use of their Web 2.0 funding kitty.