Tag: A9

Says the AP: "Amazon.com Inc.'s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities." Can it be true? It can, and it is. Amazon yanked the features from the search engine on Friday. Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener explained the features' ...

Search Engine Lowdown is reporting that Amazon appears to be dumping Google in favor of partnerships with Microsoft. In particular, Amazon's A9 search engine now draws results from Microsoft's Live.com, and Amazon subsidiary Alexa is doing the same. A9 and Alexa search results now sport a "Powered by Windows Live" badge. I'm most surprised by the A9 switch, since it has been powered by ...

Microsoft has unveilled a technology preview of a new part of its web-based Windows Live Local called Virtual Earth, which includes not only a satellite view like we're used to but also street-level photographs. It's a bit like A9's Block View, but has views in four directions instead of two, and it has a wild driving mode that lets you cruise around the streets like you're actually there. Sort ...

This shouldn't be too surprising considering A9's highly publicized effort to drive around capturing images of every local business storefront in the U.S. -- they've just launched their A9 maps service. Right now they lack the depth of coverage of Google maps, so if your area doesn't have any Block Images (i.e. actual photos) it just reverts to a standard graphical map interface. But if you check ...