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SHUT DOWN

Amazon pulling plug on Alexa Web Search

By John Cook on November 27, 2008 at 9:30 AM PST

Comments (6) | Permalink

Bad news | Cloud computing | AMZN | Amazon.com

Not every online service that Amazon.com touches turns to gold. TechCrunch reports today that the online retailer is shutting down Alexa Web Search, citing an email to developers which said they turned off the service yesterday for new customers with existing customers out of luck as of Jan. 26.

The reason for the closure: very few people were using it. Or, as TechCrunch succinctly puts it in this headline: "Amazon to Shut Down Web Search Service; Practically No One Affected."

Companies often use the holidays to release news they don't really want anyone to see. It is unclear whether that was the case here, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some other "bad news" leak out in the next day or two.

In a note on the Alexa Web Search site, the company says the service has been deprecated.

"The Alexa Web Search web service provides programmatic access to Alexa’s web search engine. The service has been deprecated and is no longer available for new subscriptions. The resources below are available for existing users of the service."

Bozos said:

on November 27, 2008 at 10:08 AM

I wonder how long before Amazon pulls the plug on its Kindle.

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jcricket said:

on November 27, 2008 at 12:14 PM

The Kindle is amazon's hedge against a book-less future. Much like I bet their music sales were suffering when the iPod/iTunes and others took off, amazon doesn't want to be left with their main product declining in sales, unless they can get a piece of the eBook pie.

Mmm, pie.

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steveballmer said:

on November 27, 2008 at 12:51 PM

about time!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

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FantasticBjorn said:

on November 27, 2008 at 2:03 PM

Sure they're known for books - but I don't think Amazon's most profitable line of business is books. That's why I think the Kindle is probably an interesting test of theirs that won't be around in a couple more years.

Amazon's future is tied to those areas where they're able to be really profitable - enabling sales for other retailers and subleasing out pieces of their infrastructure (ie Web Services, Fulfillment) to other companies.

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Knox said:

on November 29, 2008 at 8:00 AM

Kindle is a joke. Who would buy a e-book when you can buy an iPhone (or iPod touch) for the same price and get more features (including e-book features).

All this talk by analysts of the Kindle selling in huge volumes is just BS.

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What are the “Other Sources” Determining Alexa Traffic? said:

on March 5, 2009 at 11:01 PM

The factors that are determinant in a website’s http://www.alexa.com/data/details/main?url=www.fortunehotels.in Alexa rankings apart from the data collected from the users of the Alexa toolbar are no where clearly mentioned. This somehow brings in a question of doubt and credibility issues as far as the Alexa rankings are concerned. However, even today the Alexa toolbar has the largest chunk in determining the ranking of a website.

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