Your home page its great

G’night

The original intent of A9 was to provide better results by integrating past behavior, and to perhaps drive traffic to Amazon.com. You’re right though that this never really got off the ground. The data shows this. I do not have inside information, but my guess is that the volume of queries on A9 never really got to a level where it was feasible for them to start manipulating results.

Several recent key departures from A9 (like head honcho Udi Manber, Clinton, etc) probably hastened its end.

Shameless plug: Check out http://www.compete.com when you get a chance. Compete is taking a stab at providing better results by integrating user behavior of over 2 million members (the largest consumer activity database in existence). The Compete picks are based on what sites our community members find the most useful (based on time on site post query). Our goal is to enhance existing search engine results, and help you pick the best result faster.

- JC

As a software developer I make heavy use of Amazon’s web services, so I’m quite curious about the future of A9. I’d have to agree that the “old A9″ had features that were unique in the market place; and quite frankly Amazon can afford to sustain those features unil they gain “market acceptance”.

So, what’s up? If you have scoop… spill dahling :)

I don’t think A9 ever got to this second step. They did maintain search history (as do Ask, Yahoo, Google, and others), but I have never heard from anyone that they modified search result order based on that history (like Google Personalized Search).

Do you know something different? Where did you hear that A9 was modifying search results based on prior behavior?

…Unfortunately A9 never really managed to penetrate the uber-competitive search engine business. According to Compete numbers their search market share never topped more than 0.01%. Even when you look at their numbers from a loyalty perspective, A9 u…