I don’t want to add to the “echo chamber” that some have complained about in tech-blogging circles — which is a real risk given the number of blogs tech.memeorandum.com has commenting on the news — but I think it’s interesting that Amazon seems to have decided to open up its Alexa API for no apparent reason.
In other words, there doesn’t seem to have been any pressure to do so, nor is Amazon.com in financial trouble or under severe competitive threat — although it’s true that the company is no longer growing as quickly as it used to. That means it has decided that “opening the kimono,” as Fred Wilson likes to call it, is worth doing for some other reason (Fred calls Alexa “Amazon’s hidden jewel.”)
In all likelihood, it’s because Amazon has seen the spread of Google’s search, not to mention Google Maps, and Google Earth, and Flickr and so on, and realized that an open API likely creates more value — in the longer term — than a closed one. Let’s hope so. Because if there is one lesson that companies can learn from “Web 2.0,” it is that. Paul Kedrosky wonders why the Amazon announcement is news, and maybe it isn’t really. But it is still important.
Update:
Richard MacManus at Read/Write Web has more. And Cynthia Brumfield of IPDemocracy makes an important point (which others have made as well), which is that it isn’t just the open API, but the quality of the index that counts. And Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineWatch is underwhelmed by the news.