So, the cat is finally out of the bag. With A9’s former CEO Udi Manber moving to Google, Amazon has decided to go with Windows Live Search instead of Google for it’s A9 product. What does this mean?
First off, loyalists like me can now not feel guilty when I use A9, which I still think has a number of cool features for searching that haven’t made it in the mainstream yet.
Second, it’s a step towards more collaboration between Amazon and Microsoft. It’s painfully clear to everyone that the power of Google AdWords and AdSense are on a collision course for Amazon and eBay — the question is who gets to answer a customer’s shopping query first, Amazon / eBay or Google. If it’s Google, then they can cut Amazon and eBay out of the loop entirely. Think about eBay for a moment… lots of other companies have tried to do auctions, but failed, as there wasn’t the critical mass of buyers and sellers. Now, imagine Google doing auctions, but leveraging their huge distribution for AdWords on their search page… that’s millions in free ad inventory they can just throw at getting critical mass. It’d be tough to unseat eBay, but they could well do it. Same thing goes for Amazon… if you can leverage meta-search for shopping and provide some kind of trust guarantee or payment system (say Google Visa), then you can suddenly leverage the web for shopping instead of Amazon… which is a huge threat to Amazon’s business.
Things are starting to move… keep watching everyone!
That’s an intriguing thought. To see ebay knocked off it’s perch - it’s not something you expect, but google are the people who might have a chance.