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by Josh Baltzell.
Original Post: Using A9 instead of Google
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I have been a Google whore for some time now. Encouraging everyone I talk to about searching the web to use google. With a new site from Amazon I am now torn. They are offering me all the results of google with piles of other junk tossed in with it. It's hard for me to decide between extended features and the ultra quickness of a quick google search, but A9 isn't doing too much wrong.
The provide a list of features that are reasons to use A9. You can read the list yourself here. It keeps search history right on the home page (Scary! I have to remember to not search for anything that seems crazy without taking it out of history since people might see it.) The search results include Alexa information about the sites, a book text search powered by Amazon's databases, plus the normal google goodness.
Using the toolbar adds another level to it. The toolbar is pretty standard. It has a popup blocker ("Who cares?" will be a common phrase after SP2 of XP comes out with a built in popup bocker.) (The popup blocker works I guess, but it asks me if I want to see things pop up even when I click directly on a link set to open in a new window. If I click the link then I want to see it damn it!) It lets you search a variety of sources aside from A9 including: classic google, dictionary, thesaurus, the International Movie Database, and of couse Amazon.
What might be the most unique feature of the toolbar though is the diary. Using the diary you can make a not about a website you are on. Next time you come back (supposedly on any PC you are logged in to and using the A9 toolbar) the note comes back up for you. I thought that could be an interesting feature.
Overall I'd say that with a little polish on the toolbar to bring it to the quality of the google toolbar I just may switch over to the amazon team. Now two companies can know exactly what I am searching for online! Who need privacy these days?
Oh! One last feature. You can type a9.com/baltzell and it will search for the word baltzell. Sweet.
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