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."