Intro To A9

[jiinjoo]

So a9 has finally pushed out their "version 1.0" tonight. There are quite a number of interesting additions to this release, and some press release is expected soon.

For the uninitiated, this is a new attempt to redefine search as offered by google in its slick, stateless long website to something that do evenmore. In some sense, no one know what the end product is going to be, but the idea is to continue innovating.

To get the most out of a9 (maximize your "search experience"), you probably need to install their toolbar. It's just a suggestion.

If you have questions or comments on a9, post it here. We can discuss the pros and cons.


A few things I personally like best :-

1. References - as of now I turn on the google results and reference results, because really that's what i'm always looking for - knowledge. I'd like to have the web results, true, but if i'm looking for a word, sometimes i just want to definition.

2. Diaries - how you ever wish you can bookmark some website AND write something about the site so that you don't have to come back to it and figure out what's up with this site. Maybe it's just me since a large part of my work is reading documentation both from amazon's internal site and also references from around the world and i would sometimes like to copy out the essence of the document so i don't have to read the whole thing again.

3. short link - not only is it short, you type your query right in to the URL line. Go type a9.com/recom to see what I mean


Things I would complain about are features that google has e.g. business directory, spell checker, directly paste an entire US address and get a link to mapquest, things like that.

[Schye]

Use it for the first time... I think I need to use it more before posting anything here.
However, it seems to be more user friendly with new features including diaries that stated above by JiinJoo.

[chenchow]

It looks great~! However, there are still errors there... ReCom's contact information is wrong right? Syamsul or Yusuf, mind update a9.com

ReCom's current rank is 4.+ million. Anyone knows how many webpages were ranked?

JiinJoo, when it indicates that our ranking change by 2.+ milliion (arrow pointing down), does it mean that our ranking goes up, i.e. rank from 6.+ million to 4.+ million or our ranking gets worsen from 2.+ million to 4.+ million.

[el_empty]

ah i'm sure google is aware of this and will seek to release a competing version. the thing with google is that it's still the industrial standard to which firms mould their business model around google's ranking algorithm. i have a friend who's being paid about 50k/yr to bring companies' google rankings up.

if anything, a9 will probably be gobbled up by google, just like picasa and blogger.

[jiinjoo]

I'm totally amused by your "old Mr. Wang sell melon, own self sell, own self say melon good" review :P

Anyway, I don't really get your question about going up and down coz I don't see it. Are you referring to the Alexa statistics?

el_empty, I don't know if you're familiar with the philosophy side of the story. To Google, A9 is one step back in search. They require you to login, put in their words "who logs in to search?" What they are aiming for eventually is telepathy - you can can have a thought in your mind, type some random thing that reflects what's in your mind and whola you get exactly what you want. A9 goes into a totally different blind alley. It gives you tonnes of easy to use tools to organize this vast amount of information you can obtain from the web (literally, the same results that comes back from Google and more) and helps you get back to what you want quicker. It also wants you to login (you can skip this with the toolbar, which keeps track of who you are) because much like the recommendations and personalization on Amazon, A9 is trying to "personalize search" so that what you type in to the search box might not yield what others get in terms of order. Which is better? I don't know - currently most of the features I like so far has nothing to do with history. But then maybe because it's still building up the search data. When it has a critical mass, there should be some clear similarity between the kinds of things I search for and someone else's search. Maybe after that I'll start getting much more relevant search results then the generic google?

What do you guys think?

[el_empty]

na i was looking at it from a market perspective. i believe google has a lot more to lose if they choose to pursue their philosophical goals over the reality of the presence of competitors. in this case, it's one giant against the other, and when they clash, one of them will have to go down.

furthermore, despite having different technologies (and philosophies, yes?) and probably targetted markets, the products remain the same - a search engine. unless these products are differentiated enough, the clash remains.

and who is the mr wang analogy supposed to be referred to? are the melons sweet? sebiji please..

[chenchow]

el_empty, jiinjoo was citing from a chinese quotation, which said that we praise the own thing that we sell. Basically he was referring to me, because i went to a9.com website and wrote review for ReCom~!

[el_empty]

i'm chinese, and i feel ashamed of myself...

:cry:

[jiinjoo]

Here's some more good stuff to know. "Piece of the PI".

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2004/mft04091723.htm

Did anyone try this out?


el_empty, don't feel ashamed :) It's no longer trendy, I heard, to be using idioms to describe something. It was meant for chenchow as mentioned - and I'm sure his Cina is better than mine :D

[wawa]

Hm, I thought it was smart of google where we type the 'pinyin' of chinese characters and they would come up with search results for it. Very useful esp when my current com doesn't have Cstar.

[masterof_none]

I think A9 ( is it Amazon version 9?) run a pretty clever marketing campaign by giving 1.57% discount. If you're lazy to read Jiin Joo's link to fool.com, here's a brief description of how the 'sharing of the pi' works:


Amazon said that revenue from Web search advertising on A9 will help offset the cost of the discount, which equates to half the value of pi--Amazon's way of "sharing the pi."



http://news.com.com/Amazon+offers+discount+to+A9+search+users/2100-1032_3-5371839.html?tag=nefd.hed

I would say that this is to steal the market of Froogle (http://froogle.google.com) , if not the Google search. Since Froogle hasn't
made it to the mainstream yet, Amazon's quick jump to this market will open a new opportunity in the search-shop-go market, that would perhaps render eBay obsolete.

[jiinjoo]

If you didn't get it, splitting the PI = 3.14 / 2 = 1.57% :wink:

A9 was the code name for the algorithms group in Amazon before they moved down to Palo Alto, where Udi Manber was "Chief Algorithms Officer" (what a name...). But it has since been just a name like other.