Amazon is using the Thanksgiving break to quietly release some bad news – they’re shutting down one of its web services – Alexa Web Search. The service, which we first covered way back in 2006, is already closed to new customers, and existing users have until January 26, 2009 to move on to something else.
Amazon says in an email to developers that the reason for the closing is low usage, and I believe them. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all offer competing services. On the Alexa Web Search site itself Amazon says the service has been “deprecated,” which is a fancy word for shut down.
The email:
Dear Alexa Developer,
The Alexa Web Search service will no longer be available to new customers as of November 26, 2008. Use of the service is low, so we are shifting our priorities to other areas where we can provide better service to AWS customers.
The Alexa Web Search service will continue to be operational for 60 days until January 26, 2009. The ProgrammableWeb website offers a list of web services that provide web search.
We apologize for the inconvenience to you.
Thank you,
The Alexa Web Services Team
As the title says – to the surprise of no one – “practically no one affected”.
Yea, we can read. Thanks for reiterating since you had nothing else comical to say…
indeed… thank you mr obvious!
Will this affect the Alexa web traffic rankings?
It doesn’t look like it…
Web search is unrelated to the traffic rankings.
Congrats Amazon
The title “Amazon To Shut Down Alexa Web Search;” doesn’t correspond to what’s inside the article.
If I read correctly they are not shutting Web Search itself, only the API for programmers.
Maybe it’s only confusing they’re using the same name for two different services.
1. http://www.alex...m/search?q=test is “Alexa Web Search” (site for end users)
2. http://aws.amaz...alexawebsearch/ is the API with the same name
This is the first time I heard about Alexa Web Search
me too
is this thing existed? for real? lol
basic english grammer is the least we ask…
It’s ‘grammar’ you tit. Learn to spell before having a go at others for non-standard grammar
Pwn’d
@Alpacaboy
You forgot a period.
how are you gonna spell a word wrong and then get on someone else lmaooooooooo
Basic capitalization is the least I ask. Misspell everything, even your mother’s name, insert punctuation incorrectly at best, play games with grammar that push the bounds of literacy to the outermost extremes, but at least capitalize the first word of each sentence and all proper names and nouns – you’re not on IM or Twitter at the moment, after all – are you? The basic rules of writing have not gone the way of the wind online, you are not “cool” or “l33t” for writing in all lowercase, and using your thumbs on your iPhone is a weak excuse that implies I should feel sorry for you for using an expensive phone that “forces” you to communicate poorly. I don’t.
I used them one time. I did not like how alexa search is. But Amazon is always doing well. I like amazon.
I know only about alexa ranking but not about alexa web search. I dont think it will effect a lot.
There are some using it and It does affect people! I’m sure Amazon will loose trust in their other webservices: You’ll think twice before developping anythin with them.
Interesting. Thanks for the article, Michael.
FYI, “deprecated” is better described as a fancy word for “will be shut down soon”.
Alexa doesn’t even work right half the time.
I’ve been at so many places with no QA people. It really isn’t a waste of payroll. Those people do serious work and are needed.
I wonder how long before Kindle is “deprecated.”
About 3 months
Google shall rule the world
No Ali, Shutting down Alexa with negligible market share does not affect Google in any way. There would be no significant changes to cement Google’s rule over the internet….
hmmm, Am I the only sad person here? I was using their API’s for the site. Gotta try something else now.
I thought of using the search service at a time when Google didn’t (and still doesn’t) offer an API and Yahoo hadn’t opened up theirs. So, thanks in part to Yahoo for this shutdown???
This is why I love TechCrunch because they just know all the real tech heads are sneaking away from the Thanksgiving table to come here.
I just only now alexa ranking not alexa search. Hmm, i should often visit techcrucnh for updated info
It’s no big at all, what important to Amazon is the cloud, the cloud ios the next battleground for the web giants like Amazon.
anon.mailbomb@gmail.com
Well it had it’s moment, but its gone now.
what does not evolve, dies
Tell that to the cockroaches.
alexa used to be such a powerful tool to guestimate how much traffic a site was getting. its too bad that they didnt maintain it while other competitors (compete, quantcast) started offering more compelling services.
The API should have been free. Competitors offered the same type of API for search for free or combined with a revenue generating option. I never understood why they wanted to charge for such a limited offering.
For a moment I thought they are finally getting rid off the Alexa ranking crapula. Too bad.
How much did Amazon pay for Alexa? thats almost $250 Million in Amazon stocks going in the drain.
That project was severely mismanaged. They built something really powerful on the back-end but made all kinds of ridiculous assumptions about how customers would want to use it. Then, when people would ask for features or changes, they’d have this kind of “you get what you get” attitude. Totally insane.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped offering their own search on their site fairly soon.
Lack of Comments here shows how little anyone gives a shit about this news.