Amazon launched A9 today. It's a new search engine built on top of Google, but with frosting on top. Time was I could be an internal beta tester of such releases, but those days are over so I'm going to play around with it just like Joe Q. Public.
Because it is literally built on top of Google, when I signed in with my Amazon password, archives of my Google searches appeared immediately. I use Safari or Omniweb on the Mac for browsing so I can't try out the A9 Toolbar, but there is one for IE 5.5 and above users, and it includes a pop-up blocker, diary (allows you to attach annotations to websites), and other features which are account-based. That is, since you log in to use A9, you can log in from any computer and pull up your search history, web diary, etc.
Congrats to Bean and others I know who worked hard to get this out the door. I'll have to give it a whirl this week.
Ah, search. It's the saloon that's attracting all the best gunfighters in town. Can't wait for high noon.