In the USA Today article: Amazon CEO takes long view, Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is interviewed on the occasion of the company’s 10th anniversary. Although most of the interview focuses on e-commerce, Bezo’s does mention A9 (Amazon’s search service) and responds to a question about competition in the search business. He believes (and I agree) that there is room for many players.
From the interview:
Q: But how do you compete against Google and Yahoo in search, much less Microsoft and its next operating system, Windows Longhorn, which will be all about search?
A: Our premise is there are going to be a lot of winners. It’s not winner take all. Other people do not have to lose for us to win. And A9.com is trying to build a very innovative kind of websearch.
Others, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, also believe that there is room for many players in the search business. Schmidt made this point in a 60 Minutes interview earlier this year.
Schmidt said:
“It?s perfectly possible that the current competitors can all compete and coexist actually quite well, at least for a few years. So I disagree with the people who say that this is a zero-sum game.”