Not satisfied with raiding Microsoft's executive ranks, Google is now raiding Amazon's. It just hired Udi Manber, the head of Amazon's A9 search subsidiary. This is good news for Google users. A9 might not be the most popular search engine, but it has some of the coolest features (it was the first to show you your search history, it offers street-level views when you type an address into a map, and it lets you pick different categories to narrow your search such as reference,blog search, or videos).
But cool doesn't get you far when you are competing against the likes of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. A9 remains an experimental backwater of the search world. Now maybe Manber can bring some of his search magic to the masses through Google (assuming his voice doesn't get lost among the roar of the engineering masses inside Google, that is).
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