A9 (www.a9.com), a Palo Alto-based company that Amazon.com created to experiment with cutting-edge Internet search technology, announced on September 14 the unveiling of a technology that allows users to store bookmarks and other personal information online. When users find a Web page that interests them, they can create an online bookmark that A9 will store on its computers.
In another section, A9 stores a history of every Web search a user has conducted through its service, theoretically creating an archive that could span years. Users can search their A9 bookmarks and search histories with the click of a mouse. And while several smaller services have sprouted up recently that allow people to store and search bookmarks, Amazon is the first big Internet company to publicly embrace the idea and build on it.
Speculation has swirled around Amazon's plans for Web searching ever since the company announced the formation of A9 more than a year ago, and chose Udi Manber, a top search expert and former Yahoo employee, to lead the new company. Observers assumed Amazon intended to join the Internet search engine wars between Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask Jeeves. Others speculated that Amazon was more interested in perfecting a search engine for e-commerce, which could be used at the main Amazon.com website.
For now, although A9 exists as a wholly separate website from Amazon.com, users log into the site with their Amazon user name and password. Once inside, users can simultaneously search the Web, the Internet Movie Database which Amazon owns, Amazon's book catalog and an Israeli reference website called GuruNet. For now, A9's regular search results are provided by Google.
