Alexa Launches ''Search Engine for Computers,'' Designed to
Perform Complex Queries of the Web's Data Inexpensively and Quickly
SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2007--Alexa Internet, a
wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), today
launched a new version of the Alexa Web Search service that returns up
to 1 million search results from a single query, allows complex
queries involving thousands of search terms, and gives programmatic
access to the actual page content of the documents matching a query.
This release enables any developer to innovate in search at web scale
using the power of Alexa's search engine, web crawl and Amazon's
infrastructure web services. The Alexa Web Search service is offered
by Amazon Web Services at http://aws.amazon.com/alexawebsearch.
"Developers, businesses, universities and research institutions
have been asking us for years to use the Alexa web crawl for their own
very specific purposes. They don't want a search engine that returns
10 or even 100 results for a given word or phrase. They want a search
engine they can program to return millions of results based on
thousands of terms, and then analyze those results for even more
specific data," said Niall O'Driscoll, Alexa vice president of
engineering. "The Alexa Web Search service makes this possible, and in
a simple, affordable, and scalable way. Now any developer with an idea
can use the power of search to build their own business, answer
complex research questions, or discover new slices of data never
queried before."
Developers can use the Alexa Web Search service to build web
search into their applications or services, to create vertical search
engines on specific topics, and to perform custom, complex queries of
data on the web and receive up to 1 million results that match the
single query. In addition, they can filter or extract data from
documents using regular expressions that are run across the documents
matching a query.
For example, with the Alexa Web Search service, a developer could
build a directory of Paris hotels. By searching for pages containing
both "Paris" and "hotel" and retrieving up to a million matches, a
developer could create a custom slice of the web as a starting point
for a new directory. Additional processing could be as simple as using
regular expressions to extract hotel names, rates, and addresses, or
as complex as analyzing the full document text using Amazon Elastic
Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), offered by Amazon Web Services, to
identify amenities or nearby attractions. In either case, the
developer is spared the difficulty and expense of spidering the web
just to find the subset relevant to hotels.
Developers can process the page content of documents themselves
using the Alexa Web Search service to locate documents of interest,
retrieve and process those documents from Amazon EC2 compute nodes,
and store their output in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon
S3). These services offered by Amazon Web Services help make the Alexa
Web Search service highly scalable, reliable, and cost effective. The
Alexa Web Search service replaces the Alexa Web Search Platform
service.
"The Alexa Web Search Platform that we released in beta two years
ago was the beginning of what we are launching today. We learned that
developers want even deeper access to the crawl. They want a toolbox,
not a Swiss Army knife, and APIs, not GUIs," said O'Driscoll. "We
listened to our developers and the new Alexa Web Search service is the
result."
Musipedia (www.musipedia.org) -- a site that allows users to find
songs by melody instead of title lyrics or artist -- has used the
Alexa Web Search Platform to find melodies to add to their database.
"With Alexa's new Web Search service, I can do everything
programmatically. I search for up to 1 million files at a time,
analyze those files using my melody identification software running on
EC2 nodes, and release those nodes when I'm finished," said Rainer
Typke, founder of Musipedia. "And now the service is incredibly cost
effective and easy to use. The process allows me to focus on my
algorithms and website, and leave the web-scale infrastructure parts
to Amazon and Alexa. The end result is that Musipedia users can now
find many more sites with the melodies they are searching for."
About Alexa Internet
Founded in April 1996 by Bruce Gilliat and acquired by Amazon.com
in 1999, Alexa Internet provides dynamic data about the web. Alexa's
services include web search, web site traffic information, statistics,
and other tools to make timely and intelligent business and consumer
decisions.
About Alexa's Web Services
Alexa Web Search
The Alexa Web Search service returns up to one million search
results, allows complex queries involving thousands of search terms,
and gives programmatic access to the actual page content of the
documents matching a query. Additionally, the Alexa Web Search enables
any developer to innovate in search at web scale using the power of
Alexa's search engine, web crawl and Amazon's infrastructure web
services.
Alexa Site Thumbnail Web Service
The Alexa Site Thumbnail web service provides developers with
programmatic access to thumbnail images for the home pages of web
sites. It offers access to Alexa's large and growing collection of
images, gathered from its comprehensive web crawl.
Alexa Web Information Service
AWIS offers software and Web developers access to more than 100
terabytes of web site information and popularity data collected by
Alexa's web crawl of 10 billion Web pages on 16 million sites.
Developers can use AWIS to answer difficult and interesting questions
about the web, and programmatically incorporate these answers directly
into their applications. Types of web site information and popularity
data that are accessible to developers through AWIS include website
traffic data, related sites, and a categorized view of the web ordered
by traffic rank.
About Amazon Web Services LLC
Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services exposes technology and
product data from Amazon and its affiliates that enable developers to
build innovative and entrepreneurial applications on their own. More
than 180,000 developers have signed up to use Amazon Web Services
since its inception. Amazon Web Services recently launched the
Solutions Catalog where developers can list the businesses,
applications, and solutions they have built using Amazon Web Services.
The catalog is available at http://solutions.amazonwebservices.com.
Amazon Web Services LLC is an Amazon.com company.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in
Seattle, opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers
Earth's Biggest Selection. Amazon.com seeks to be Earth's most
customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover
anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its
customers the lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers
offer millions of unique new, refurbished and used items in categories
such as health and personal care, jewelry and watches, gourmet food,
sports and outdoors, apparel and accessories, books, music, DVDs,
electronics and office, toys and baby, and home and garden.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including
www.amazon.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.de, www.amazon.co.jp,
www.amazon.fr, www.amazon.ca, and www.joyo.com.
As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms
include Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context
indicates otherwise.
Amazon Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the
meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ
significantly from management's expectations. These forward-looking
statements involve risks and uncertainties that include, among others,
risks related to competition, management of growth, new products,
services and technologies, potential fluctuations in operating
results, international expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and
claims, fulfillment center optimization, seasonality, commercial
agreements, acquisitions and strategic transactions, foreign exchange
rates, system interruption, significant amount of indebtedness,
inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments and fraud.
More information about factors that potentially could affect
Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings
with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2006, and all
subsequent filings.
CONTACT:
Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
http://www.amazon.com/pr
SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.
