Alexa Web Search Platform Released 63
Philipp Lenssen writes "Amazon's Alexa is releasing their search index (the same that powers the Wayback Machine) to developers via their new Alexa Web Search Platform. The Alexa framework is not for the weak of heart -- expect to learn how to use their C API, and expect to pay micro-amounts for requests and CPU cycles used -- but it also seems to be more powerful than the rival APIs from Yahoo and Google."
Alexa? Nope. (Score:4, Informative)
Google's APIs [google.com] are better.
Re:Pay? (Score:5, Informative)
Price (Score:4, Informative)
$1 per CPU hour ($.50 for unused hours)
$1 per GB/year
$1 per 50GB processed
$1 per GB downloaded
and $1 for every 4000 user requests.
This is just for search service, right?
And how do these prices relate to similar services?
C not required (kinda) (Score:5, Informative)
The Data Retrieval API is written in C, so it may be natural for users to develop C applications against this API. However, the Platform features a utility named awsp_cat. This utility reads CIDs from stdin and writes the raw content to stdout. Users may develop applications in arbitrary programming languages to process the awsp_cat output.
Perl developers would be able to wrap this into their existing codebase in no time, assuming they want to pay the fees.
Re:Price (Score:4, Informative)
Data Value (Score:4, Informative)
What's your opinion about Alexa ranks? Reliable? IMHO, there is too few users of the Alexa toolbar. It is also quite biased (IE, Windows). So except maybe for the top 30,000 websites, I'm not sure about the reliability of the stats.
Who is responsible for a security breach? (Score:5, Informative)
Man, I would hate to see who or what is held responsible.
Re:What is the definition of spyware (Score:3, Informative)
- Tricks users into installing its software, or installs itself without permission
- Actively tries to stop users from uninstalling it, forcing people to use a third-party app to remove it (Ad-Aware, etc.)
- Tracks users
The first two make it scumware, the last makes it spyware. Google toolbar does track users, but warns them before doing so and only installs when users want it installed.