Amazon.com has formed a group to develop e-commerce search technology, an attempt to gain a foothold in a lucrative market Google and Yahoo now dominate.
Called A9.com, the independently run unit of Amazon is charged with building a shopping search tool for internal use and for other companies, an Amazon representative said Wednesday. The operation, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is headed by Udi Manber, a well-respected computer scientist and former Yahoo executive. Manber has been interviewing software engineers in Silicon Valley in recent weeks and plans to have a team of 30 by October. "A9.com is a new, separately branded and operated company to create the best e-commerce search technology available to Amazon and third-party Web sites," said Alison Diboll, an A9 spokeswoman who would not provide any specifics on the services.
The formation of A9, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, comes just five months after Google announced that it had signed a multiyear deal to provide search services and sponsored links to Amazon. As a result, the creation of A9 could signal Amazon"s intentions to compete on its own, as did Yahoo"s decision this year to buy Inktomi and Overture Services. Yahoo, Microsoft and others have recommitted themselves to Web search in the past year, amid Google"s success and analyst projections that the market could be worth $2 billion in 2003.