Alexa/Amazon : Path Breaking Moves – Dawn Of Web 3.0

WSJ reports that Amazon(Alexa) plans to allow software and Web developers to request customized data searches when it scans the Web to seek new information, something that other commercial search engines generally don't allow. Through the just launched The Alexa Web Search Platform, it provides public access to the vast web crawl collected by Alexa Internet. Users can search and process billions of documents - even create their own search engines - using Alexa's search and publication tools. The tools shall let developers make special requests for information such as images or music files during Web crawls. Big search service players offer developers access to their Web indexes. Most of them offer software-developer kits and APIs, or application programming interface, which let programs access an operating system and other services.
John Battelle sees that all these are done via web services. It's all integrated with Amazon's fabled web services platform. And there's no licensing fees. Just "consumption fees" which, at my first glance, seem pretty reasonable. ("Consumption" meaning consuming processor cycles, or storage, or bandwidth). As he sees it , Alexa and Amazon are turning the index inside out, and offering it as a web service that anyone can mashup to their hearts content. Entrepreneurs can use Alexa's crawl, Alexa's processors, Alexa's server farm and he points out that this means that Yahoo and Google will have to stare hard at their own (somewhat limited) search services and APIs, and think what they might do to compete, that much is certain..
As I see it, we have to attach importance to what Alexa's claim that services that can be rendered to someone wanting to build a podcasting search engine could use Alexa's tools and computers to request specialized audio files that were newly available on the Web. Amazon may benefit if applications begin to pint at it for potential sales. This is a forerunner to web 3.0 & developers will also be able to make their Alexa-created applications available to other Web-site operators and developers on Amazon's Web-services site. Alexa’s move is indeed a significant step towards making web3.0,a reality – man things are really really fast.