Comments on: More on A9

By: Justin Hoffman

Justin Hoffman — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 17:46:29 +0000

Hackers like myself deserve what we get. We should get a life, I know.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 23:52:38 +0000

I don't really like it. The colors and the ui still need some work - it's very boring.

Sometime last year, I read A9 was going to be a shopping search engine. For shopping and prices, I still prefer using shopping sites like Priceflo.com, they are more useful.

By: Kendall Willets

Kendall Willets — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 18:06:59 +0000

I gave up my search privacy when I stopped deleting my Google cookie. A9 is hardly the first offender in this area.

By: Francisco

Francisco — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 18:04:02 +0000

Enhanced by Google? What is that supposed to mean?

By: Mark Harwood

Mark Harwood — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 17:41:27 +0000

I wonder if A9 will look to create their own index to capitalize on the data they gather.

At the moment A9's user profiles are only used to dress up the results of regular Google searches. Search results are still simply selected on the basis of the two words typically entered by the user in the search box.

A more powerful solution is to use the information they have stored in user profiles as implicit search criteria added to every search. Unfortunately this requires the close integration of user profiles and search index data to be done efficiently and this is not possible while A9 are reliant on Google.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 16:54:32 +0000

a9 should definitely have a setting such that porn searches are not remembered. That could be a show-stopper.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 14:48:32 +0000

Immediately after logging in I did a single search, then checked my history and found the keywords for an Amazon search for a book I was looking for three months ago. Go figure?

By: Peter Caputa

Peter Caputa — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 14:33:29 +0000

i agree with this post wholeheartedly. i think we need to continuously weigh the value of our privacy vs the ability to offer personalized experiences. Obviously, a company like amazon has a lot at stake in doing this the correct way without harming their public perception. They are giving us complete control over it and there is no one forcing us to use it.

John... What do you think of a Eurekster/A9 merger possibility? A lot of the features that you discussed in this post are already implemented at Eurekster. Plus, Eurekster/SLI has some patented "learning technologies" that help rerank results based on user clicks. Adding Alexa's/A9's browsing data, combined with Amazon's ability to push the technology to user, it could be a pretty beneficial pairing, atleast from an application/adoption perspective.

By: Seun Osewa

Seun Osewa — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 10:29:44 +0000

"What about porn-related searches?" A9 allows you to modify your history. Besides, the information in your mailbox is just as sensitive and is also only a password away1

I think some of the A9 concepts will find their way into google. It only needs to be possible for the user to have control of where the information is stored.

By: Manuzhai

Manuzhai — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 10:28:56 +0000

Gray text is bad! [1] Especially as the background color is some broken white, makes it hard to read (text is quite small in Firefox, as well).

[1] http://www.wowwebdesigns.com/power_guides/ever_heard_of_contrast/