Internet search engines aren't a dime a dozen—not just yet. At Amazon, it'll set you back a few thousand to run your own.Nearly all the raw material to run a fairly complex Internet search service is now available, for lease, from online retailer Amazon.com Inc.
For a fee of as little as $1 a day, Amazon will provide access to an index of 5 billion Web pages plus the Internet-based tools to create new twists to mine the information warehouse and present findings to an audience.
At the core of Amazon's latest move is a rather novel idea for Internet search, Amazon believes. But it's based on an old business model whereby a company builds a product for other companies to buy or lease, develop further, then brand as their own.
In this case, the product is a search engine developed by Alexa, a San Francisco-based company that Amazon bought in 1999.
"Alexa and Amazon are turning the index inside out, and offering it as a Web service that anyone can mash up to their hearts content," wrote search analyst John Battelle on his Weblog.
To read more about the 2006 outlook for Internet search, click here.
Manufacturing and communications services have long been using this "white box" business model.
The plusses are that businesses don't need to spend as much developing their products, and the negatives include the homogeneity of products all based on the same technology.
The move benefits Amazon because it's both a new revenue stream and a channel to draw more users to its Web operations.
A debate has begun as to the response, if any, from Google Inc., Yahoo Inc., America Online and other major search engines, which only now make available only a tiny sliver of their secret algorithms for development purposes.
Battelle asks: "I do not know [yet] if using this service will be cheaper for developers and entrepreneurs than rolling their own. Does this change the game?"
"But I can only imagine that indeed it is, or Amazon would not be doing this."
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