Amazon Drops Mapping and BlockView and...

About Directions

Special Announcement

Newsletter Sign Up

Calendar

Syndicate This Blog

RSS 0.91 feed

RSS 1.0 feed

RSS 2.0 feed

Top Referers

myteams.dot.ga.gov (85)
planetgs.com (75)
www.thegisforum.com (71)
www.spatialsciences.org.au (32)
www.bloglines.com (27)

Our Points

Monday, October 2. 2006

Amazon Drops Mapping and BlockView and...

Gary at ResourceShelf let me know that Amazon's A9 has dropped mapping and other services this week.

The company "What's New" page says little about why, just that the goodies are gone.

We have discontinued the A9 Instant Reward program, and the A9 Toolbar and personalized services such as history, bookmarks, and diary. To get help uninstalling your A9 Toolbar, visit toolbar.a9.com. We have also discontinued A9 Maps and the A9 Yellow Pages (including BlockView™).

Too much competition? Too little use? Too little return on investment? Or, do we just not use A9 as a search tool?

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 06:00 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0) |

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

All of the above, I think.

I hate to sound like Rush Limbaugh, but I told you so. There is only so much web mapping that the general public can take before they get enough of it and move on to the next buzz-generating happening (and then to the next). Back in April (?) I predicted in a public comment on this blog that the public's infatuation with web mapping and map mashups would soon begin to wane, just as MORE developers were jumping into the fray.

Don't get me wrong -- I love mapping, and I make my living in GIS. But the excitement that Google Maps generated in 2005 gave false hopes to people and companies who thought that they could build a business around web mapping and get rich quick. It turns out, you can't.

#1 Atanas Entchev (Link) on 2006-10-02 11:08 (Reply)

Interestingly, I was browsing through Google's management team (http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/execs.html) a couple of days ago and noticed that they snapped up Udi Manber earlier this year. I think he was the brains behind A9's BlockView. Perhaps we'll see a reincarnation of street level imagery from Google at some point in the future.

#2 Reid Watkins on 2006-10-02 12:17 (Reply)

A9 thoroughly failed what I call the "page slap" test: did anyone ever send you a link to a cool A9 map or A9 driven app? Did you ever read of a blogger talking about the ways to deliver A9-driven to an actual client?

Of course not.

Another thing, if the A9 stuff has been shuttered, who's going to invest time/resources in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud?

Brian

#3 Brian Timoney (Link) on 2006-10-02 19:26 (Reply)

I agree with Brian, and, again, attempt to explain this away with user fatigue. --Atanas

#4 Atanas Entchev (Link) on 2006-10-02 20:00 (Reply)

Too bad the blockview images were lost - kind of like tossing out the baby with the bathwater - the blockview images were the one thing that had me using A9

Cheers

#5 Jason on 2006-10-15 20:30 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Advertisers

Polls

What's your opinion of the quality of Google's "new" U.S. dataset?

	November '09
Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30