Its been noted in a few places around the blogsphere, but a number of notable Google-partners have been jumping ship. The largest of these partners has been Amazon. Amazon, who’s search engine, A9, utilized google to provide web search results, has moved to Microsoft’s new Live search service. The switch came as a bit of a surprise, since Amazon hadn’t given any indications that a move was coming.
Along that vain, I’m wondering if we will see Google become more isolated as it starts to move into direct competition with its former partner sites. Amazon, for example, had to be concerned about Google’s own print service that it’s building. I wonder who will be next and ultimately, who will be the beneficiary of these defections. On Search Engine watch, there is a feeling that Ask.com could come out the big winner, since they are the last of the major search vendors still providing Pure searching.
And finally, I’d like to point out a post by Nicolas Carr at: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/04/the_default_war.php. Carr looks at some of the things that appear to have Google nervous as Microsoft starts focusing more on search and Google in general.
–Terry