Monday’s release of the A9 search toolbar for Firefox by Amazon subsidiary A9.com highlights how you’re now really spoiled for choice when you want to search for information on the web and on your own PC.
Just like the A9 toolbar for Internet Explorer, the new toolbar for Firefox (Windows, Mac and Linux versions) makes it easy to use A9’s rich search features which include the web (Google), “Search Inside the Book” (Amazon.com), images (Google), movies (Internet Movie Database), and reference (definitions, encyclopedic entries and other topics by GuruNet). In addition, your personal history, diary, and bookmarks will also be searched automatically.
To enable all these extra things, you need to have an account at Amazon (not just Amazon.com, but any of the Amazon country offerings).
Whew! So much choice. My natural preference is to use Google: I trust it’s accuracy and reliability. That’s not to say I have doubts about A9; I don’t. It’s web searching ability is based on Google (or, as they say, “Search results enhanced by Google. Results also provided by A9.com and Alexa”). I’m ok with that.
So think about all the choices you now have to search for dcos, pics, files and other information, on your own computer as well as on the web. There’s Google Desktop. I’ve got that installed. There’s Copernic Desktop Search. Yep, have that as well to try it out. If I want to specifically search blogs, I tend to use IceRocket. I’m also taking a look at the experimental Google Personalized Search. There’s an evolutionary MSN Search just around the corner, by all accounts. (On my wish list – being able to use one of these tools to include my RSS webfeeds in searches.)
And not to mention application-specific search enhancing with, for example, Lookout for Outlook to search through your email, calendar, contacts, etc.
Can somebody please wrap up all of these things into a single application/toolbar/browser extension/whatever so I can just go there, type, click on some preference choices, click again and then get the results? Thank you very much.
That might be the real killer search application.