Amazon did A9 back in 2004, a public search engine, I seem to recall it collapsed under a cloud of privacy concerns.

They certainly have the infrastructure and compute resources to launch a search engine, seems logical they would pursue it.

With the commercial interests that Amazon has any offering that they produced would be no better than google (WRT privacy).

With the commercial interests that Amazon has any offering that they produced would be no better than google (WRT privacy).

I don't think privacy is as big an issue today vs. 2004, what they were doing in 2004 probably looks like childs play in comparison to what google is doing now.

I haven't seen any amazon snoop mobiles driving around lately.

Google has simply failed in its core product. They have repudiated the reality of a dynamic web.

[edited by: TypicalSurfer at 12:38 pm (utc) on Aug 22, 2012]

Google should be much more worried that 97% of their income from the AdWords / AdSense combo. If a serious competitior ever attacks that market, watch out! Users of Google's service are already tired of the decreasing payouts and useless customers, and are practically begging for a viable alternative.

Hmm, interesting, perhaps Ebay is very much getting there too, ahh well

Google should be much more worried that 97% of their income from the AdWords / AdSense combo. If a serious competitior ever attacks that market, watch out! Users of Google's service are already tired of the decreasing payouts and useless customers, and are practically begging for a viable alternative.

PPC started innocently enough but quickly morphed into a destroyer of margins for the advertiser. He with the largest margin wins which leads to obvious outcomes.

I think something less "sexy" like 10-25 cent clicks would fold google overnight.

PPC is kinda shady in as much as you don't really budget in the traditional sense, it's more like asking someone for a price and they reply "how much you got?". PPC probably resembles more of a casino model, you put your money down and hope that the house is playing straight.

I could imagine that we in the future will see more small engines and that a lot of websites will noindex there sites so google will not have access to there content, be cause they dont see that benefit of google that they saw for 1-2 years. Those websites will then promote there site via social networks, PR, advertising and let google out. We do see more and more content be striped out of sites, so the google searcher dont need to go to that site, it began on Google image.

A cool move from Amazon would be to noindex there there site, to really compete.

i think google is its own worst enemy in this. when someone searches for a product, and google returns amazon pages in 5 out of the first 10 spots, its no wonder that people start thinking they may as well go straight to amazon.

google are basically telling the user to go to amazon all the time. eventually the user will take the hint.

I could imagine that we in the future will see more small engines and that a lot of websites will noindex there sites so google will not have access to there content

If anyone could get **even** 10 of the world's "largest" sites to do that - G would have a problem... I say largest - I actually mean 10 of the world's most 'in-demand' websites (whether for info, retail or social).

A cool move from Amazon would be to noindex there there site, to really compete.

Apps will continue to change many people's habits on how they search for info - but it will take more than that to put G in trouble... the mass removal of info from Google would hit the press as a massive negative vote for Google - but not convinced even that would change many people's habits (the lazy majority) as the alternatives are not strong enough or not in people's awareness enough.

This explains why google shows so many pages from amazon in the results ( doamin spamming ). Itīs in order not to loose more poeple to amazon. Instead they should bring alternatives to amazon, that would be a great search engine.

A cool move from Amazon would be to noindex there there site, to really compete.

Whatever Amazon do they are not going to banish themselves from G, why on earth would they do that?

I definitely go direct to Amazon on many occasions. They are cheap, maybe not always the cheapest, but their interface is so slick and easy I can't be bothered to go elsewhere. Buying through Amazon is so easy, they are reliable and problem free.

Martin Ice Web is so right. 100% spot on. What is Google thinking? Write a subset to their search algorithms that say only one web site url per 50 search results...let the little guys in more to compete with Amazon and other larger established competitors.

I understand the "trust" factor - big box stores, mega big online only retailers , and the larger "established" older sites make for better search results (so they think). However, don't go overboard and allow these sites more than one listing per search term/phrase.

I used to laugh at Yahoo when they let Google into their empire. They let Google serve up their search results...paid them...really funny stuff.

Google needs to learn from history.

perhaps Ebay is very much getting there too

I suspect they've been trying for years.