Amazon Drops Mapping and BlockView and...

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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)

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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)

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