Lots of buzz yesterday and this morning about the newly launched Amazon's search engine. I think people tend to overreact - it is just a venture where each party does what knows best. Google does the search while Amazon's purpose is consolidating its position in the online retail industry. And I disagree with John Battelle's claiming that you can't really be in the commerce business without having at least a strategy for owning search. Amazon's IS operating one of the best search engines, it doesn't need to own it, especially now, when the search engine space became crowded. Keep in mind that Amazon is in retail not in the search engine (or contextual advertising) industry. As such A9 is a clear example of consolidating position in the market and keeping core competency in focus. If interested in more info see the stories from CNET or Yahoo. 

UPDATE: The more I think about it the more I tend to believe that this is a deliberate strategy of Google to explore some lower end markets so that it would distract top competitors from attacking their search engine supremacy. Something similar to what Intel did by launching Celeron so that it would compete against AMD on lower ends at the cost of cannibalizing the Pentium sales. I know it doesn't have all the similar evidence hence I am not sure it makes sense yet, I still have to chew on it. If you have any insights, just let me know.