Battelle on A9

I'm probably the last one in the blogosphere to link to it, but here's a great review of A9, with some business analysis, from John Battelle. Excerpt:

It seems to me, Google's position in Amazon's A9 implementation is at best a step backwards. If A9 is as good as it seems to be, every customer that uses and/or switches to A9 becomes an A9 search customer, and, more likely than not, a deeper and far more loyal Amazon customer. (The service incorporates a personal search history and many other really neat tweaks, including a wicked good Toolbar.) In essence, Amazon seems to be making a play for Google's customers. Or it seems that way to me, anyway. Sure, Amazon isn't in the AdWords business. It's happy to outsource that to Google and focus on the entire US retail GDP instead...