Alexa Embraces Web Developers

Amazon.com's Alexa unit has been turned into a web service, to allow developers API access to the search engine's database. Compared to search giants like Google and Yahoo, the Alexa search engine doesn't have the same name recognition to Internet users. As of today, told the Wall Street Journal. The report cited blogged about the difficulties developers would face if they tried to build a search engine from the ground up, in terms of time and expense. "Now, for less than the cost of an iPod, they can get into the search field and begin inventing and creating," Mack wrote. He posted a summary of the service: •  Three online web snapshots of up to 100 terabytes each •  Powerful tools to sift through the content to create your own data set •  Upload, compile and run your own programs on a processing cluster across the data set •  Store your output on a storage cluster •  Integrate your data into a search index •  Access your new search via Amazon Web Services David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.