Amazon, like Google seems to continue to fish for ways to make money. One bucket of bait went to their search engine attempt, a9.com. To me, their most unique and compelling feature was their instant rewards program. I know it made me use them (and save a bunch of money), but only enough to keep the discount active. I never did like the layout compared to Google. They gave it a year, but they are now dropping features like autumn leaves.
What's gone?
- Instant rewards
- Map service
- Diary
- History in the a9 toolbar
- Bookmarks in the a9 toolbar
- Toolbar
- Yellow pages
The announcement is up on the What's new page. I imagine this will change by the time you read this :) I've linked the services up above so that you can see they are dead.
They have added a nice feature to the regular search engine though. They now have continuous scroll on the search results. That means no more next>next>next>next> nonsense. I guess Windows Live gets the credit for that one. Ohh, and for the record, defaulting to including a book search pane is dumb. If I want to search Amazon, I'll go to Amazon and search. They do a much better job at presenting the relevant results in a useful manner.
I want competition to Google, but I don't see much that will make me switch.