Does anyone bet on Amazon?

Conficio · #1 (**permalink**) 12-11-2003, 10:07 PM

Dear visitors, dear reporters, dear SE specialists,
Google is all the talk and everyone speculates about Microsoft/MSN getting in to the search engine business. Then there is Yahoo, which everyone remembers and wonders, what they are going to do with all the technology they bought (Inktomi, Overture).

But what about Amazon?

They operate Alexa, based on Google data and amended with some nifty features.
They have a search operation of their own with the amazon.com web-site, which is not too small.
They support the wayback machine through Alexa
They are affiliated as far as I know with some projects that digitize and make available on the web books and print publications with expired copyrights.
They work on a project to put the texts of most of the books they sell online (if they can get the copyright holder's permission). That's a pretty impressive index!

In my opinion Amazon is much more aggressive and visible than Microsoft or Yahoo at this point in time.
Does anyone have some background info? What search technology do they use?
I'd like to hear your comments or opinions on the impact? Has Amazon (or the other projects) been a topic at the conference?

K<o>

Whit · #2 (**permalink**) 12-13-2003, 12:25 PM

I colleague and I have been quietly discussing the role of Amazon for the last few weeks. Our conversations have mostly consisted of wild speculations, but we have agreed to place the bulk of our wild speculation on the theory that at the very least MSN is going to enter a strong partnership with Amazon in order to shut froogle down before it gets too big.
Microsoft has worked closely with Amazon for a while helping develop applications based on the Amazon database. A recent article illustrates this here.
This leaves us wondering about the Microsoft "smart tags" and what role they will play in the new search engine.

In the end our conversations haven't amounted to much, but we have had a lot of fun trying to out guess the market on this one. Every time we start looking at the predictions for Google's IPO versus Amazon's total stock value we giggle a little and imagine that Bill is giggling where ever he is at.

[disclaimer] Please remember, I said it was all wild speculation done in fun. [/disclaimer]

Garrett · #3 (**permalink**) 12-15-2003, 10:33 AM

Hi Whit and Conficio,

No one mentioned Amazon, at least not that I heard during the conference. There was lots of talk about MSN as a late-coming powerhouse, so if Amazon and MSN are linked (I'm going to read that infoworld article) you should definitely be watching for a big move from Amazon.

This is some interesting speculation -- I'm going to make sure the WebProNews readers hear about this.

Garrett