from my e-mail..... fwiw
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You can find Amazon's new search engine, called "A9", at
a9.com
You may notice that A9 looks a little like a peach-colored Google.
That's because it is a peach-colored Google -- Amazon took a portion
of Google's search engine, changed the color, and added some extra
stuff to the back end.
What extra stuff? Well, do you remember how, back on October 9th of
last year, I told you that Amazon has a new "search inside the book"
feature that lets you look at content from inside of some of Amazon's
books? That's one of the features that Amazon has added to A9.
If you search A9 for Rosa Parks, you'll get 181,000 web page hits.
Oddly, an identical search at Google yields 460,000 hits. So I guess
A9 really is only using a *portion* of Google's database.
But, if you look on the right side of A9's results page, you'll see a
tab that says "Open Book Results." Click on that tab and Amazon shows
you 14,401 books that talk about Rosa Parks. Of course, Amazon is
perfectly willing to sell you these books. But you can also browse
*some* of the books' pages without your having to drain your beloved
bank account. And to me, that's a pretty cool feature.
Now for the confusing/distressing stuff. First, you need to be logged
in to your Amazon account -- that annoying Amazon page that asks you
for your email address and password -- before you can see Amazon's
"search inside the book" pages. No account, no "search inside the
book."
Second, if you log in to your Amazon account not at Amazon but rather
at A9, A9 will record all of your searches and place them in a
personalized search history. That might be a privacy concern for
some.
Fortunately, there's a way to bypass that. Instead of going to
A9.com, head on over to
generic.a9.com
This is A9 without the search history and other personalization
"features." You'll still need to login to your Amazon account at
Amazon to see your "search inside the book" pages, but at least A9
won't be keeping a record of what you've been searching for. |
