Amazon.com steps on Google's toes

The day’s just getting underway here in Sydney, and the big Net news of the day filtering through from the US is Amazon's new A9.com search service.

It seems ex-Standard honcho John Battelle was first with the news in the blogosphere, although despite his best intentions I saw the news on WSJ first.

A9 is a spin-off company that promises a raft of new features not currently on Google. These include A9's own toolbar, and the ability to search "Inside a Book."

I've not read too much commentary on A9 yet' but one thing is immediately apparent. Amazon/A9 is continuing to build on its strategy of collecting and analyzing user information.

For example, in order to use the toolbar, and enable the (very cool) user search history feature, you need to sign in using your Amazon.com account. I of course could not remember my password, and in the process of recovering it needed to enter the last five digits of the credit card, plus the zip code last used to purchase something at Amazon. A9.com and Amazon.com might be separate companies in name, but they share the same back-end processing system.

Then we have the toolbar’s EULA, which includes this statement:

By collecting URLs, A9.com tracks and collects a record of users' web browsing activity within and across websites. A9.com also collects and stores other user information you give A9.com when you download and install the software and information you enter into the toolbar service. Because A9.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc., A9.com is able to correlate information it collects with personally identifiable information that amazon.com has, and Amazon.com has access to information collected by A9.com. Among other things, A9.com and Amazon.com use this information to customize, personalize, and otherwise improve the services they provide to you.

I’d love to know what the “other things” are.

Another observation: If you want to view specific pages using A9’s “Inside a Book” feature, the site asks you to enter your credit card details, promising you won’t be charged (at least not right at that moment).

Contrast all this with the amount of personal information I've given rival Google: zero, nada, or as we Aussies would say, “bugger all.”

I'll be on the lookout for what other privacy-minded people have to say. Hopefully given Amazon.com's good track record with privacy it will avoid the knee-jerk "Evil" accusations that people love to throw around these days.

Update: Another cool feature I've been using in the search results is an icon called "site info." In this example, I've done a search for A9 news and the pop-up information listed with each search result includes traffic rank, site access speed, and three sites listed under the heading: "People who visit this page also visit." That's cool.

Update 2: I'm now using two toolbars - Google and A9. One of the most useful features of both is the popup blocker. Google's blocker automatically blocks pop-ups and gives you a visual tally of how many are blocked. A9 on the other hand gives you a pop-up of its own that gives you the option of accepting or rejecting a pop-up. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a pop-up blocker?

Posted by markjones, April 14, 2004 10:40 PM | | TrackBack